Enrile wants De Lima, Roxas barred from seeking public office for GCTA mess

MANILA, Philippines — Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said Wednesday that Senator Leila De Lima and former Senator Mar Roxas should be barred from seeking public office for the alleged irregularities in the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law.

Enrile said there should be no confusion in the provisions of the Republic Act 10592 mandating the GCTA law as its Section 1 clearly states that heinous crime convicts are among those excluded from being released earlier than their prison sentence based on good conduct.

“They should be disqualified forever from holding public office,” Enrile, who was Senate President when the GCTA was signed into law in 2013, told reporters at the Senate when asked about the liability of De Lima and Roxas.

“Sila ang may kasalanan, sila ang gumawa eh (They are the ones at fault since they are the ones who made it). The people who are below there are [just] being guided. They are the Cabinet members. They should hold their mistakes,” he said.

The IRR of RA 10592 was signed when De Lima and Roxas were secretaries of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), respectively.

Enrile said that supposed addition of heinous crime convicts as beneficiaries of the GCTA law is “unconstitutional, non-existent, and void ab initio (from the beginning).”

“Whoever did that should answer to all of these problems,” he said.

The former lawmaker also explained that heinous crime convicts released based on the GCTA law should be “subject to hunting” since they should not have been released in the first place.

President Rodrigo Duterte earlier ordered all heinous crime convicts freed on good conduct to surrender to authorities before September 19. /je