The still unreported Senate report.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Belinda Olivares-Cunanan

EARLIER I reported that last June 5, before Congress adjourned, Sen. Joker Arroyo noted the "mystery" of why Committee Report No. 66 remained uncalendared more than a year after the Senate committees on public order and illegal drugs, defense and blue ribbon wound up their investigation. CR 66 is said to recommend the investigation of Sen. Panfilo Lacson by the Department of Justice for alleged involvement in drug-trafficking, kidnapping and other crimes. Arroyo said it was increasingly difficult to defend the Senate against the charge that its members are covering up for one another. Sen. John Osmena agreed with Arroyo, stressing that Majority Leader Loren Legarda ought to explain the "mystery" of the unreported report.

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Writing to "enlighten" this column, Legarda denied that she was protecting Lacson (various quarters have alleged that she's doing so because Lacson had invited her to be his running mate). Her account of CR 66's fate in the hands of the senators is a classic study of the interaction between human dynamics and vested political interests. She said that on three occasions the majority attempted to calendar it for plenary debates, but these were questioned by the minority "on procedural grounds." In a way her account reminded me strongly of how vital cases have languished for years in our courts due to "procedural and technical" matters.

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Legarda stressed that from the moment CR 66 was filed with the bills and index section of the Senate on June 3, 2002, it "ran through the ordinary course of queuing," up to the time she presented a motion on July 31, 2002 in plenary that it be calendared for ordinary business. Immediately afterwards, however, Lacson raised a parliamentary inquiry, stressing that while majority of the members of the Barbers committee had signed CR 66, the defense committee failed to get majority of its members to sign it. Legarda said that after conferring with Lacson, Barbers agreed to withdraw the report from the calendar, pending inquiry into this failure to get enough signatures, and accordingly, she withdrew it.