Transcript of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago

This will be an open ended joint session because it has been agreed that there will be six cabinet members who will appear as resource persons so that all the members of Congress, both the Senate and the House, can ask them questions of fact. If that is the case, then, it has also been agreed that every member of Congress will have thirty minutes each because when he asks his preliminary question, the answer of the cabinet member will also be taken into consideration. So, as the rules say, there will at least be 20 hours that will be consumed by the mere interpellations of the cabinet members alone. Therefore, we cannot possibly finish it even if we work all night. We will have to meet again tomorrow, and there is no assurance that we will finish our joint session. Our great fear is that if the members of Congress are struck by a fit of loquacity or a virus on to keep on talking or using the proceedings as a platform for campaigning for the coming elections. It is possible that the Supreme Court may even overtake the Congress in putting its input on the martial law question, to say the least. What will happen then is, first, people in the Congress would want to convince the cabinet members of their own particular position so they will not be able to convince the other members of the congress but the cabinet members who are already tied by their allegiance to the President to defend her position. We'll not be therefore trying to convince each other to change our minds. In effect, therefore, this would be an exercise in redundancy.

If you want to prove that a cabinet member is not telling the truth, then you will have to conduct a lengthy cross examination but that is what always what happens in trial court. The credibility of a witness can be determined only by contrary evidence that is to say by contrary witness, or, by contrary documentary or electronic evidence. But, if you only have 30 minutes including the answers to your questions, you cannot possibly overthrow the credibility of the witness. So I don't really know what's the point of interpellating these cabinet members because we cannot tear down their credibility by cross examination and they will stick to their version of the facts because there is no one set of facts that will be acceptable to everybody. There will always be some people in the audience who will disagree with the interpretation of the facts. In other words, the facts will be mediated by the cabinet members because we are not eyewitnesses to what actually occurs.

In my view, since I have always said that I am in favor of revocation, it is the burden of the cabinet members to show that there is an actual rebellion in Maguindanao. You've noticed--since I'm sure you have copies of the reports submitted by the Office of the President--that there are only pictures of people who are dead or of military vehicles that are being shown inside a garage. There is no picture of government forces fighting against rebel forces, which would naturally be a state of circumstances during a rebellion. The question here is, show me the rebellion!

Normally, a journalist or a group of journalist would be embedded on all sides of the conflict--on both the side of the government and of the rebels. Why is there no journalist showing us pictures or giving us narratives of the accounts of the battle between the government and the rebels that is a necessity for rebellion to exist. In my view, what Malacanang has done is to prove the view rebellion at best is imminent--it's about to happen. But unfortunately, the records of the Constitutional convention are rich, abundant with the statements of the various commissioners that what the Constitution requires is not imminent rebellion but actual rebellion.

Will you participate in the interpellations?

Fortunately, I will be number three since this was done bilaterally among the senators. So I can stay and interpellate. When the senators each interpellate for 30 minutes, he or she can choose any of the cabinet members to answer any of the questions. So I can stay and do that. But I'm afraid they will not even be fully prepared because as a lawyer and as a legislator, I am allowed to only interpellate on the legal aspect. I am not going to discuss the wisdom of the proclamation, if it is a good thing or a bad thing, I am only going to discuss whether the Constitution has been obeyed or it has not. It's too far a stretch for them to claim that there is an actual rebellion. A rebellion, maybe, but an actual rebellion--no! So, show me the rebellion.