(This article, which appeared in the November 25, 2024 issue of The Daily Tribune, is being reprinted for its relevance and with the author’s permission—Editor).
IN February 2009, my client Jaime Paule, one of the alleged principals in the so-called Fertilizer Fund Scam, was ordered by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to be detained in the Pasay City jail on the ground of contempt.
The jail warden, exhibiting wisdom and firmness unusual for civil servants of his pay grade, questioned the legitimacy of the order, telling the then Senate Sergeant-at-Arms’ agents in pithy language that he was at a loss as to how the Senate — a part of the legislature — could be giving orders to officers of the city jail, which is under the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, an executive agency.
Out of respect to the Senate, the warden accepted Mr. Paule, but refused to put him in a cell, keeping him instead in his office.
In the meantime, I filed a petition for habeas corpus on behalf of my client before the Supreme Court. My former friend Dick Gordon, head of the committee — an excellent lawyer but a pompous ass of a senator and a horrible human being — after having read the petition (and probably realizing he was standing on legal quicksand) ordered Paule’s release.
As an aside, our client was recently acquitted by the Sandiganbayan of all charges relating to the said investigation. His wife, however, suffering from the slings and arrows of the Senate’s outrageous condemnations of her husband, died of a heart attack before her time.
Fast forward to the present day, and it would seem the Legislature has learned dick (sorry, Mr. Gordon, couldn’t resist that one) about the practice of placing witnesses under detention outside of its premises.
In 2022, our clients Mohit Dargani and Linconn Ong, in relation to the Senate investigation on medical supplies provided by Pharmally, were ordered confined — again by the aforementioned Senator Dick — in the same Pasay City jail. This action was invalidated by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Ong v. Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that was argued successfully by yours truly.
The practice is pernicious, and definitely legally, fatally flawed. While the power of Congress to cite in contempt is beyond cavil — although much-abused by the sinister Quadcomm — an exhaustive reading of the historical jurisprudence of such power will yield the conclusion that the subject of the contempt citation may only be kept within the custody of the legislature.
This is why both chambers of Congress have detention facilities on their premises. But then, the members of the Quadcomm are not given to exhaustive research, as their minds are easily exhausted.
Besides, the power to detain for contempt is not essentially punitive; rather, it is a means to provide a compulsion for resource persons to provide information to aid the legislature in its function of formulating laws.
Ordering the holding of persons in the Correctional Institute for Women — which is what the Quadcomm did to my client Cassy Li Ong and, of late, Atty. Zuleika Lopez — for reason of “contempt,” and subjecting them to the same rules as a convicted prisoner, is abusive and indecent.
It is a transparent attempt to intimidate and harass. As for the excuse offered by that flatulence, Rep. Joseph Paduano, about the House’s holding areas being congested, he has naught but himself to blame for his prostitution of contempt powers.
The irregularity of the situation has not been lost on ordinary persons, and in this day and age of social media, the great majority of opinions expressed therein have been disapproving.
We should expect serious constitutional challenges to these moves to come from the camp of Atty. Lopez (and most possibly ours) to impugn these actions.
Meanwhile, Congress — the House more particularly — would do well to try and salvage its tattered reputation by withdrawing its oppressive order. In this way, it would be correcting itself before it suffers another embarrassment of having its deeds corrected and struck down by the Highest Court.