The Supreme Court has required opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV to comment on the petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida and his family seeking to enjoin the lawmaker from conducting a legislative inquiry into the alleged conflict of interest arising from their security agency’s multimillion-peso contract with government agencies.
“Considering the allegations contained, the issues raised and the arguments adduced in the petition, it is necessary and proper, without giving due course to the petition, to require the respondent to comment on the petition and application for restraining order and/or preliminary injunction,” the SC said in an en banc resolution.
The SC gave Trillanes a non-extendible period of 10 days within which to submit his comment on Calida’s petition.
The resolution came after Calida, his wife Milagros and children Josef, Michelle and Mark Jorel filed on Tuesday a petition asking the SC to stop Trillanes’ plan to investigate the alleged conflict of interest arising from the multimillion-peso contracts their security agency’s secured from government agencies.
In a 39-page petition, the Calida family sought the issuance of temporary restraining order stopping Trillanes from conducting what they described as “void” legislative inquiry into Vigilant Investigative and Security Agency Inc.’s (Vigilant) contracts with government agencies.
Trillanes along with other opposition senators had filed a resolution calling for such an investigation, but the petitioners claimed that Trillanes decided to carry out the inquiry on his own despite the lack of Senate’s action allowing such an investigation.
“Stripped to its core, the intention of [Trillanes] is to obtain evidence, investigate offenses or violations allegedly committed by Petitioner Solicitor General or the Petitioners Family Members, and humiliate them, all in the guise of an invocation of legislative power,” the Calida family said.
The petitioners asked that the letters sent by Trillanes, which informed them of the scheduled August 16 investigation, to be declared void and restrained for “failing to meet a legislative purpose.”
They also asked the SC to permanently barred Trillanes from conducting the legislative inquiry or from initiating or holding any probe against them “on his own and without legal authority from the Senate and law.”
The controversy arose when reports showed that Vigilant, of which Calida was previously the chairman and still is a major shareholder, had bagged security service contracts worth P200 million from several government agencies, including the Department of Justice.
Calida already insisted there is no conflict of interest in the deals, a stance he and his family maintained in their petition.
“The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), as a government agency, is not involved in the approval of the contracts between Vigilant and its clients. Those contracts were all obtained through public bidding in accordance with law. Neither is the OSG involved in the business of licensing, regulating or supervising security agencies such as Vigilant,” the petition stated.