A shameful inquisition by Congress

The editorial titled “Shame” (Opinion, 11/29/16) was most eloquent in decrying the televised public hearings recently conducted by Congress on the extrajudicial killings and the drug trade. It took the words right out of many peoples’ mouths, so to speak.

Aren’t the halls of Congress supposed to be hallowed, where proposed laws are thoroughly discussed and deliberated upon prior to their enactment? Yet the hearings turned out to be a comedy, more entertaining than fact-finding, and only raised more troubling questions than reassuring answers.

1. Wouldn’t the investigation have been better undertaken by the police and National Bureau of Investigation, with Congress just furnished with their findings, so that it could devote more time and energy to its more important function of legislation?

2. Why present resource persons (read: witnesses) who admittedly are of questionable character and sorely lack credibility?

3. Why viciously expose to ridicule and abuse, before the nation and the world at that, a senator even before due process could establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt? Just because she is a woman?

4. Aren’t the tasks of determining a criminal act and dispensing justice the province of the courts of law? Why then did the lawmakers push for the “drama”?

—SANTIAGO A. DEL ROSARIO, MD,
former president,
Philippine Medical Association