Senate President Franklin Drilon. JOAN BONDOC/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Senate President Franklin Drilon on Thursday expressed hopes that reopening the investigation on the botched Mamasapano operation will not pose further delay in the Senate’s legislative agenda, including the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
Drilon said that while he supports the request of Senate Majority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile to reopen the Senate’s investigation on the debacle, he said that the upper chamber has an “extremely tight working schedule.”
READ: Enrile info prompts new Mamasapano inquiry
“If reopening the Mamasapano will allow our esteemed colleague Senator Juan Ponce Enrile to ask questions that he deemed are important to ferret out the truth, then we support it.
“But given the upper chamber’s extremely tight working schedule, I am really hoping that the additional hearings will not affect the Senate’s work on its continuing legislative priorities,” Drilon said in a statement.
Drilon said that when Senate resumes on January 18, it only has nine full session days before it adjourns again on February 5.
Meanwhile, the Senate leader expressed his concern that the issues surrounding the bungled Mamasapano operation will derail the enactment of the BBL, a priority legislation of the Aquino administration.
“The Mamasapano incident had created an immense political storm that seriously affected the peace process which we had hoped would end decades of armed conflict in that part of the country,” he said.
The Senate inquiry is set on January 25, exactly a year after the counterterrorist military operation which killed Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Bin Hir alias “Marwan” and resulted to the death of 44 elite police commandos, 17 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and three civilians.
Enrile pushed for the reopening of the Senate investigation as he is said to be in possession of “new matters and perspectives” on the bloody incident. CDG
READ: Palace welcomes reopening of Mamasapano probe