Davao: The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to comment on a petition seeking to compel the panel to release its report on the flood control project investigations. In a resolution dated April 29 and released on Thursday, the SC required the blue ribbon panel to comment within 15 days from notice, denying the issuance of a temporary restraining order and/or status quo ante order sought by the petitioners.
According to Philippines News Agency, the resolution, signed by Clerk of Court Marife M. Lomibao-Cuevas, was issued 'without giving due course' to the petition. The petition was filed by lawyers Eldridge Aceron, Sikini Labastilla, and Purificacion Bartolome-Bernabe, seeking mandamus and certiorari before the high court and challenging the Blue Ribbon's denial of their request to release the partial committee report.
The Senate panel, in its February 23 decision to turn down the request, invoked the deliberative process privilege to prevent the 'chilling effect' on frank deliberation within government bodies. The petitioners, however, claimed that Blue Ribbon chairman Panfilo Lacson publicly disclosed the report's contents over three weeks, with the senator confirming that the draft report recommended plunder and other charges against senators based on evidence gathered in the hearings.
'Chairman Lacson is the institutional holder of the deliberative process privilege he now invokes against petitioners. He is not a rogue subordinate acting without authority. He is the chairman - the very person empowered to decide what the committee discloses and what it withholds. When the privilege-holder chooses to publicly disclose the substance of the privileged material, the privilege is surrendered, not stolen,' the petition said.
The petitioners also cited that the 1987 Constitution guarantees the people's right to information on matters of public concern. 'The right to information is not a gift from the state to the citizen. It is a guarantee the citizen holds against the state. It is time this Honorable Court enforced it,' they added. They also asked the SC to issue a writ of mandamus compelling the blue ribbon committee to release the full, complete and unredacted draft partial committee report as it existed on or about February 3 and 4, 2026.
