Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Wednesday said Malacañang’s memorandum directing the Executive Department officials and personnel to stop attending the Senate hearings is a protest on the manner the blue ribbon committee conducts the inquiries.
“The memo is not a defiance of the congressional prerogative to conduct legislative inquiries,” Guevarra said in a media interview.
Guevarra said the government officials and employees have already spent so much time attending the Senate blue ribbon probes.
“It is a protest on the manner the Senate blue ribbon committee has conducted its hearings, which have taken a lot of valuable time from executive officials who are urgently addressing a public health emergency,” Guevarra said.
“I believe that this issue need not come to a head. Reasonable arrangements could be mutually agreed upon so that both the legislative and executive branches could continue to perform their respective mandates,” he added.
Malacañang on Tuesday released a copy of the memorandum ordering all officials and employees of the Executive Department “to no longer appear” before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings chaired by Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon.
Under the memo, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea underscored how the Executive Department has been showing “due respect” to the Senate panel through “faithful attendance” and “participation” of its officials and employees in the hearings.
The memo, however, noted that there are “clear indications” that the hearings are meant to go on indefinitely and are conducted “not in aid of legislation, but to identify persons to hold accountable for alleged irregularities already punishable under existing laws.”
The memo said the Senate panel has “stepped in the mandate of other branches of government and has deprived itself of the only basis to compel attendance to its hearings.”
The memo also directed Executive Department officials and employees to focus all their time and effort on the measures to address the current state of calamity on account of Covid-19, and in carrying out their other functions.
The Senate panel is investigating the government’s acquisition of medical supplies at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
Source: Philippines News Agency
