Enrile wants Senate to conduct plenary debates on Mamasapano

THE SENATE will schedule plenary debates on the Mamasapano massacre after Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile took to the floor Wednesday to ask about the status of  the report of the Senate committee that investigated it and why the report was never taken up for discussion in the plenary.

“If we want to really be open and transparent to the people, then we must do this. Otherwise, there will be the suspicion that we are hiding something. I personally think that we are hiding something,” said Enrile, the minority leader.

Enrile said he had a lot of questions to ask the top officials in Malacañang, the police and the military about their actions, or inaction, during the police operation in which 44 commandos from the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) were set upon and killed by various Muslim rebel and armed groups.

The senator noted that many Senate inquiries conducted in aid of legislation resulted in committee reports that had not been discussed, debated or voted upon in the plenary.

The report on Mamasapano should not share this fate, he said.

The Senate owes it to the slain SAF members and to the survivors to place the matter into the records of the Senate, he said.

The plenary discussions would also show the public how the Senate dealt with the complex issues discovered during its investigation.

“They must know as well how each member of this Senate took their respective stands in the findings of the investigation and the specific recommendations contained in the report,” he added.

Sen. Grace Poe, the chair of the committee on public order and dangerous drugs that conducted the hearings into the massacre, on Wednesday said she “fully supports” Enrile’s transparency call.

Before the debate on Mamasapano can begin, Poe has to sponsor it on the floor and defend the committee’s findings that, among other things, found President Aquino ultimately responsible for the tragedy.

Poe claimed that she was just waiting for Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano to schedule the debates.

Cayetano said he had no objection to debates being conducted on the Mamasapano report and would schedule it, subject to the Senate calendar.

According to the Senate records, after the Poe committee submitted the report last March 18, it was calendared for ordinary business on May 4, but Poe never made a move to sponsor it.

After questions were raised in the media about her failure to report out the committee findings at the plenary, Poe said last June that it was not necessary for the plenary to discuss the Mamasapano report because it was just a fact-finding investigation and that she had submitted the committee’s findings to the Ombudsman.