De Lima Senate’s test case

THE Senate committee on ethics and privileges was reconstituted on Tuesday and its chairman, Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III, declared that its first case, the alleged drug links of Senator Leila De Lima, would be treated as “confidential.”

Sotto said the complaint against De Lima would be confidential until the committee had decided whether or not it would open its proceedings to the public.

During the time of former Senate president Manny Villar in the 15th Congress, the proceedings in the ethics committee was open to public. In the previous Congress under Senate President Franklin Drilon, the ethics committee was not organized as nobody wanted to head it.

Senators Gringo Honasan, Panfilo Lacson and Risa Hontiveros attended Tuesday’s closed-door organizational meeting, but the other members of the committee who failed to make it to the meeting were Senators Loren Legarda, Panfilo Lacson, Grace Poe and Francis Escudero.

Legarda was presiding over the budget hearing, being the head of the Senate finance committee.

Due to Legarda’s workload at the finance committee, Sotto said, she might be replaced by Senator Manny Pacquiao.

Lawyer Abelardo de Jesus filed an ethics complaint against De Lima over her alleged involvement with illegal drugs.

Sotto said they would first study the complaint to determine if they would consider it or trash it. He said a copy of the complaint had already been distributed to all members of the ethics committee. 

He said the committee would first determine if it had jurisdiction over the complaint and whether or not it conformed with the required form and substance before deciding on its merits. 

De Lima said she had yet to see a copy of the complaint, “so I’d rather that I wait first for whatever action, initial or otherwise, that the ethics committee would be taking on that matter.”

“I’m being subjected to a lot of these harassment tactics,” said De Lima about the complaint filed by a former member of the legal team of former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III on Tuesday rejected the reports he was deliberately shying away from the “word war” between President Rodrigo Duterte and De Lima.

“I am not being silent about it. I’m just respectful,” Pimentel said.