Jailed Senator Leila de Lima said Tuesday Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto was supporting the Drilon-Lacson resolution allowing her to participate in the plenary sessions through video conferencing.
In speaking about the Drilon-Lacson resolution, Recto was referring to Senate Resolution 51 filed by Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon and Senator Panfilo Lacson, which seeks to allow De Lima to participate in the Senate’s plenary sessions through teleconferencing or other forms of remote electronic communications.
Drilon and Lacson said De Lima had a “mandate to participate in the lawmaking process and deliberations of proposed legislation.”
But Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. said Monday De Lima must not be allowed to participate in Senate proceedings.
“The double standards and sense of entitlement of some people are frankly quite disheartening. When I was incarcerated due to politically motivated charges, which the Court has finally settled in my acquittal, a very vocal group were against my participation in Senate proceedings,” Revilla said, referring to De Lima and her supporters.
Recto said De Lima’s being behind bars, over charges she had not been convicted yet, should not be a bar in the performance of her duties, which could be rendered remotely.
De Lima, the fiercest critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, has been at the PNP Custodian Center in Camp Crame since February 2017, is accused of receiving drug money from the drug lords detained at the New Bilibid Prison to bankroll her senatorial run in the 2013 elections.
By tradition, Recto said, the Senate work on legislation was an all-hands-on-deck affair in which every member, regardless of political affiliation, was expected to contribute in pointing out the mistakes in a bill and pouring more merits on it.
If ordinary workers could now work from home, courtesy of the Telecommuting Law that President Duterte signed into law last December, he said, De Lima could certainly do it from her prison cell.
“We have also been crowd-sourcing ideas, inviting stakeholders to speak before us in order to enrich the discussion on a measure, except one whose name ironically appears on our rolls,” said Recto.
He regarded as baseless the fear that hearing the voice of an imprisoned woman in the plenary could make a dent on the impregnable popularity rating of the President, which has stayed in the stratosphere.
“If, for example, she states something false in plenary, I believe that it is not the DDS detachment in the Senate who will be the first to stand to correct and challenge her, but her friends, because in the democratic space that is the Senate, friendship is not a factor in upholding the truth,” Recto said.
The Drilon-Lacson resolution also says De Lima could interpellate but could not vote due to the Senate rule that says a lawmaker must be physically present in able to cast a vote.
“At least she can contribute to enhance proposed measures if our resolution is adopted,” Drilon said.
Drilon said he proposed the arrangement since the Senate had previously procured equipment for teleconferencing during the time of former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who was detained during his first term as a senator.
