Where to find answers ‘in aid of legislation’

“Inquiries in aid of legislation” form part of our lawmakers’ constitutional powers. During the investigations, resource persons are invited to get their inputs on how a proposed law could be crafted or an existing law amended.

But if these resource persons are either cajoled, intimidated, shouted at, embarrassed, or practically threatened with imprisonment, what relevant inputs could be derived from them in the investigations? We have been witnesses to about a hundred inquiries in aid of legislation, but we still have to hear from our legislators about a particular law enacted or existing laws amended on the basis of such investigations.

In his Nov. 11, 1995, column in the Inquirer, former Supreme Court associate justice Isagani A. Cruz decried a Senate investigation where he said “I thought some of the senators were grandstanding and that some of the witnesses were unfairly treated, also for public consumption.” He lamented how legislators could “conjure all kinds of excuses to hold legislative investigations where they can project their profiles on television while competing for the limelight with the witnesses.”

While the article was written in 1995, it’s practically the same situation we have at present, where such congressional inquiries are conducted, without passing specific laws resulting from such investigations. Like the lamentation of Justice Cruz, what we only see “is a reprise of the old-time zarzuela, with a few glamorous actresses, some discomfited victims, and plenty of swaggering villains in the cast.”

Perhaps there is a need to stop, in the meantime, all these investigations in aid of legislation. If our lawmakers want to know the loopholes or problems in an existing law, they or their staff could attend court trials to observe cases in court where an existing law intended to be amended is at issue.

On the basis of the arguments and examination of witnesses conducted by the lawyers in these cases, as well as the commentaries of the judges or justices, the lawmakers could properly assess what specific changes should be made on existing laws or the need to enact new ones.  Inside the courts, these legislators would hear both sides and not only those they want to hear in a biased and politically motivated investigation in Congress.

—ROMULO B. MACALINTAL,
Las Piñas City