Congressional investigations: the good things and the bad

Both houses of Congress, more than the executive and the judiciary, are giving more than enough information to the public on such important issues that have direct bearing on the lives of citizens and the whole nation. Thanks to social media, more than the mainstream print and broadcast platforms, the people are well-informed of what matters most. Many Filipinos are informed, entertained, intrigued, challenged, and inspired by the contents of the deliberations.

If not for the televised Senate investigations of the POGO operations, government agencies, which are usually too slow, so inept and even corrupt, at least some or most of them, we could not have known the can of worms in Bamban and in Porac. Senator Risa Hontiveros, the most hardworking and perhaps the smartest and most courageous senator of the republic, has rendered to the nation a great service of incalculable value. Aided by another crusading senator, Win Gatchalian, Hontiveros exposed not only the illegal gambling, alleged kidnapping, and torture of scam and kidnap victims, she opened a Pandora's Box that exposed the multiple shenanigans brought to our land by illegal aliens.

Her exposés also revealed that: first, the Comelec was outsmarted by a simple farm girl who didn’t go to school when the elections body allowed an alien to run for public office and make a mockery of our electoral process. Second, she exposed the apparent corruption, anomalies, and irregularities of the so-called late registration system. If some officials of the Philippine Statistics Authority aren’t corrupt, they’re sleeping on their jobs. A small town in Davao had a civil registrar who reportedly kept issuing thousands of late registration birth certificates to Chinese-looking individuals who just appeared from nowhere. Only morons and imbeciles wouldn’t seriously cast suspicions on such highly-questionable transactions.

The House quad committee, chaired by Surigao del Norte Rep. Ace Barbers, Laguna Rep. Dan Fernandez, Manila 6th district Rep. Benny Abante, and party list Rep. Caraps Paduano, has been able to pressure such vital witnesses as Sheila Guo, Cassandra Ong, AR dela Serna, and even former secretary Harry Roque to disclose information which, when tied together, would inevitably lead a reasonable mind to make some logical conclusions. There is a highly-competent cross-examiner in the person of Batangas Rep. Jinkee Luistro who is calmly able to make adverse witnesses look like liars as many if not all of them were really lying.

All these are good for the country. The people must be well-informed. But even as we applaud the legislature for these worthy endeavors, we must hasten to interject some downsides to all these, or disadvantages, if you will. First the Senate and the House secretariat are being ordered to summon too many public officials and all of them don’t have enough time to testify as resource persons due to a simple time and motion predicament. They summon officials of the AFP, police, Navy, Coast Guard, DOJ, NBI, Immigration, AMLAC, PDEA, and LGU officials. They all leave their offices, delay their actions on pending matters, and attend too many Senate and House investigations.

Many undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, bureau and regional directors, together with officials of scores of offices, agencies, and tribunals are being required to attend under threat of contempt for not being present. Even constitutional bodies like Comelec, COA, and Civil Service Commission are being summoned to appear and only very few of them have the time to shed light on the matters. And these people have to be fed lunch, dinner, or both, plus snacks and a flowing of coffee. Can you imagine how much the government spending is for all these?

Many of these investigations are also redundant. Cases that are already being investigated by the Senate are also being looked into by the House. To make matters worse, a number of the issues being taken up by both houses of Congress are already pending before the police, NBI, prosecutors, DOJ, and before both the trial and the appellate courts. The Senate president and the speaker should discuss these duplications and devise a system of synergy and complementation, or simple coordination. Much funds and many official working hours are being wasted because of lack of leadership and management.

There must be more efficient and more effective ways of achieving the useful results of congressional investigations at their optimum costs. This is a leadership and management challenge. They must craft a protocol that can still achieve the desired results without squandering resources.