PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has signed into law a bill returning the power to issue subpoenas to the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
The new law will allow the police to compel suspects to appear before the PNP-CIDG.
Republic Act 10973 amends the Department of the Interior and Local Government Act and gives the PNP chief and the CIDG director and deputy director the authority to issue subpoenas.
In other developments:
* A bill by Senator Panfilo Lacson seeks to upgrade the government’s capabilities against insurgencies, terrorism and other threats to national security via several measures—including streamlining the procurement process for defense equipment and prohibiting the sale of strategic defense real properties.
In Senate Bill 1734, Lacson is pushing for a stronger defense department that will implement a more credible national defense system to address threats from within and without.
“This bill is envisioned to update national defense policies, principles and concepts, to institutionalize needed improvements and to codify various laws on national defense, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the civilian bureaus, with the end in view of streamlining and further professionalizing our country’s defense establishment,” Lacson says in his bill.
• The Philippine National Police is giving priority to the recruitment of members of the Special Action Force as its aims to fill up five battalions, Director Rene Aspera of the Directorate for Personnel and Records Management said Friday.
Aspera said they were concentrating on the recruitment for the elite unit of the PNP instead of the regular recruitment as President Rodrigo Duterte had ordered the creation of an additional five SAF battalions to counter terrorism and battle communist rebels.
R.A. 10973, authored and sponsored by Lacson, will further build the capability of the PNP-CIDG in investigations, the handling of evidence and the prosecution of people distributing illegal drugs because of the low conviction rate in drug-related cases in the Philippines.
A subpoena will compel suspects to appear before the PNP-CIDG, while a subpoena duces tecum will force the presentation of documents.
Refusal to do so would allow the PNP-CIDG to file a case for indirect contempt before a Regional Trial Court.
Both Senators Franklin Drilon and Lacson agreed that the subpoena powers should be limited to the PNP Chief, the CIDG director and deputy director and that those powers may not be delegated to other officers.
Aside from the courts, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Department of Justice, National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, National Police Commission, Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Cybercrime Operation Center of the Cybercrime Investigation Coordination Center are authorized to issue subpoenas.