FACT CHECK: Panelo names wrong committee that cited OVP’s Zuleika Lopez in contempt

Former presidential legal adviser Salvador Panelo wrongly claimed that the quad committee of the House of Representatives cited in contempt Zuleika Lopez, chief of staff of Vice President Sara Duterte.

He also criticized as a “patent abuse of authority” the order to transfer Lopez from the House detention facility to the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City before dawn on Nov. 23.

STATEMENT

In his Nov. 25 column for The Manila Times, Panelo wrote:

“THE quad committee’s citation of contempt of lawyer Zuleika Lopez, chief of staff of Vice President Sara Duterte in the Office of the Vice President (OVP), is an excessive use of the contempt power given by the Constitution to Congress.”

Source: The Manila Times, Abuse of power and assault on dignity (archive), Nov. 25, 2024

The rules of the House governing inquiries in aid of legislation authorizes a committee, garnering two-thirds of the vote of its members present, to punish a person for contempt on the following grounds:

• Refusal to obey summons without legal excuse
• Refusal to be sworn or placed under affirmation
• Refusal to answer any relevant inquiry
• Refusal to produce books, papers, documents or records that are relevant to the inquiry and in possession of the concerned person
• Acting in a disrespectful manner towards any member of a House committee or any misbehavior in the presence of a committee, and
• Undue interference in the conduct of proceedings.

FACT

It was the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability that cited Lopez in contempt, not the quad committee.

The good government committee, chaired by Manila Rep. Joel Chua, launched on Sept. 18 its inquiry in aid of legislation into the alleged misuse of the appropriations of the Department of Education and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) under Duterte. The inquiry was triggered by a privilege speech of Manila Rep. Rolando Valeriano on Sept. 3.

The House quad committee — composed of the Committees on Dangerous Drugs,Public Order and Safety, Human Rights and Public Accounts— investigates the possible links across illegal online gaming operators (POGOs), illegal drugs and extrajudicial killings in connection with Chinese-led syndicates during the Duterte administration.

Read FACT CHECK: Bong Go claim on Duterte ‘not allowing’ illegal activities needs context

In his Sept. 3 speech, Valeriano pointed out some red flags in the OVP’s budget, such as the concentration of its ayuda programs only to the National Capital Region (NCR), and the lack of documents to back its claim that it collaborated with 793 strategic partners in 2023.

Valeriano, who chairs the Committee on Metro Manila Development, said he has been wondering where in the NCR were the billion-peso allocation for the OVP’s socio-economic programs spent.

“Hindi pera ng pangalawang pangulo ang Office of the Vice President budget para sa 2022, 2023, 2024 at 2025. Pondo ng bayan ‘yan,” he noted.

(The Office of the Vice President’s budgets for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 are not the vice president’s money. That’s the money of the Filipino people.)

BACKSTORY

The power of contempt, while not explicitly provided in the Constitution, is an inherent power of Congress.

It allows the legislative branch to perform its duties without impediment, and “compel the availability of information necessary in shaping legislation,” wrote the Supreme Court in a March 2023 decision on a petition challenging the Senate’s contempt and arrest orders for Michael Yang and Linconn Uy Ong in 2021.

In the same decision, the high court reminded Congress that its constitutional power to hold legislative inquiries is subject to these limitations: “(1) the inquiry must be ‘in aid of legislation;’ (2) the inquiry must be conducted in accordance with its duly published rules of procedure; and (3) “[t]he rights of persons appearing in or affected by such inquiries shall be respected.”