Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday downplayed the impact of the Supreme Court decision denying the Senate’s petition challenging the constitutionality of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to bar executive officials from attending Senate hearings.
MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday downplayed the impact of the Supreme Court ’s decision denying the Senate’s petition challenging the constitutionality of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to bar executive officials from attending Senate hearings.
Zubiri clarified that the Senate “respects the Court’s decision and the body will discuss how to move forward with this.” For former Senate president Vicente Sotto III, the SC decision only supported the Senate as a co-equal branch of the executive, maintaining that he has yet to read the complete SC decision.
In the SC ruling, penned by Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier, the high court found that there is no actual case or controversy ripe for judicial adjudication, considering that the Senate itself has its own rules in resolving committee jurisdiction challenges and should have resorted to that before bringing the case to the SC.
He added that it is “completely illogical” to claim that there was no immediate or threatened injury to the powers of the Senate with the issuance of the memorandum, since executive branch officials attended the previous hearings prior to the order. “This bone of contention presented by the Senate is already beyond and above a mere assertion of its jurisdiction to conduct inquiries and to compel the executive officials to again attend its hearings. This time, the Senate is already questioning the constitutionality of the action of a co-equal branch,” he said.
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