The Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) on Tuesday did not push through with its plan to hold livestreamed hearings this week after the appearances of two members of the House of Representatives in the proceedings were not shown live to the public.
Caloocan third district Representative Dean Asistio asked and was granted an executive session while Quezon City first district Representative Juan Carlos ‘Arjo’ Atayde was also asked if he would agree to a livestream, and he, instead, took the option of a closed-door session.
Asistio said he chose to hold an executive session with the ICI because he refused to be subjected to ‘trial by publicity’ as he might reveal some ‘sensitive’ information.
As for Atayde, he was reportedly ‘asked’ by the ICI whether his appearance before the investigating body would be livestreamed. He did not elaborate on his response and why he agreed to a closed-door session.
‘They asked me before the guidelines of the livestream came out. with respect to the commission. They asked me,’ the actor-turned-politician told reporters in an ambush interview.
Asistio and Atayde came to the ICI for the first time on Tuesday as resource persons after contractor Pacifico ‘Curlee’ Discaya implicated them both in a Senate inquiry on Sept. 8.
Showing his payoff ledger as proof, Discaya had said that Atayde and Asistio were among the legislators in the list who allegedly received kickbacks from infrastructure projects.
ICI last week announced that livestreamed hearings will already be the norm in the coming weeks, except in cases where parties will request to be covered by confidentiality, so as to not compromise the ongoing probe into the corruption in flood mitigation projects.
‘The ICI may grant such request if it determines that the same is meritorious with sufficient factual and legal bases, and not intended to delay or frustrate the mandate of the ICI,’ read the 11-page guidelines that the three-member panel approved on Friday.
The guidelines take effect immediately upon the publication in the Office Gazette or newspaper of general circulation.
Requests to keep the ICI sessions to be held in an executive session may come from witnesses, resource persons, as well as government agencies, such as the Anti-Money Laundering Council, Office of the Ombudsman, Department of Justice, Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, it noted.
But the ICI itself can also decide motu proprio, or on its own, to conduct the hearings in an executive session.
This new policy, which aims to inject transparency into the ICI mandate, can also apply to past resource persons who ‘gave their consent’ to publicly disclose audio and video recordings and pieces of evidence, such as reports and presentations they previously turned over to the commission.
The move to retroactively implement the livestream policy is the ICI’s response to remove any doubt on its proceedings, it noted.
‘For the avoidance of doubt, the (livestream) guidelines shall retroactively apply to the testimony of witnesses and/or resource persons, who previously appeared before the ICI, gave their consent to the audio-visual recording, including the documents, reports, presentations and evidence that they identified, disclosed, shared, provided and/or submitted in the course of, and as result of their participation in the hearings or proceedings,’ ICI said in the guidelines.
But Brian Hosaka, ICI executive director, told reporters that the investigating body would have to ‘coordinate’ first with the personalities invited to the hearings before deciding to open access to the public.
Among those cited by the ICI is the 2008 Supreme Court decision on Akbayan, et. al vs. Thomas G. Aquino, et. al, docketed as G.R. No. 170516, where the high tribunal recognized the ‘informer’s privilege,’ which allowed the government to refuse disclosure of the identity of the person who provided information to law enforcement agencies.