Article 56. The Commission on Audits shall have exclusive jurisdiction to audit all the Federal, State, and Local Government accounts. It shall have prosecuting powers.
Article 57. The Civil Service Commission in the Federal Government shall supervise the local Civil Service Commissions in the different States.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
These Articles are self-explanatory and have been discussed previously in relation with other Articles.
Article 58. There shall be a Blue Ribbon Commission in Parliament and in the State Assemblies. The chairman and two-thirds of its members shall belong to the opposition party or parties. It shall investigate violations of law and cases of graft and corruption. It shall have the power to institute criminal, civil, administrative, and impeachment proceedings.
The impeachment of any Federal official shall be decided by the Constitutional Tribunal.
There shall also be a Finance Commission in Parliament and in the State Assemblies. The chairman and two-thirds of its members shall belong to the opposition party or parties. The Finance Commission in the Parliament shall have access to all the financial records of their respective State Assemblies and of the State Authorities created to support the secretariat of departments.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
This Article creates two constitutional Commissions in Parliament: the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Finance Commission. The Blue Ribbon Commission of the Senate was limited to investigate anomalies and scandal in the Government but had no authority to file any action much less an impeachment proceeding in line with its findings.
The two Commissions created in this Article give the minority parties the power to clean the Government since they are vested with prosecuting power to institute criminal, civil, administrative, and impeachment proceedings against any guilty party as a result of their respective investigations. Their area of action, however, is limited to officials of the Federal Government.
A parallel Blue Ribbon Committee and Finance Committee shall be created in each of the five State Assemblies to handle dereliction of duty cases in the respective States.
Article 59. There shall be a Tribune of the People in the Federal Government and in each level of Government. An Act of Parliament shall prescribe the number of members in the Federal level.
The chairman of the Federal Tribune of the People shall belong to the largest opposition party as may be defined by an Act of Parliament while the other members shall be representatives of the living forces of the country as may be defined by law.
They shall receive their compensation as well as all other expenses of their respective secretariats from the organizations they represent. The office and the Secretariat of the Tribune itself shall be borne by the respective level of Government.
Article 60. The Tribune of the People shall be the eyes, the ears and the conscience of the people and shall have the following powers:
- To have access to all records of the Government and its instrumentalities in the level it is serving;
- To investigate the merits of information concerning graft and corruption that it may receive from the responsible sectors;
- To request the assistance of the secret service personnel and to initiate investigations of appropriate Government organizations;
- To issue subpoenas duces tecum, and to punish non-compliance thereto;
- To initiate impeachment proceedings and other actions before the Constitutional Tribunal and the Civil Service Commission; and to prosecute criminally, civilly, and administratively violations of law by any public officials and employees.
An absolute majority of votes of the Tribune of the People shall be required for the impeachment of a constitutional official.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
Articles 59 and 60 are self-explanatory. We need to stress, however, the following points:
- To build up a case of graft and corruption against any particular public officer is not the function of a single individual. We recall the instances when rumors were persistent against the dishonesty of particular public officials which in some ways were traceable up to the President under the unwritten law of command responsibility.
A famous comment of one President, to what is now being referred to as “rumor monger” was to challenge the latter to prove the accusation. Such a challenge was entirely unrealistic since the evidence of dishonesty could only be found in the records of the Government. They were generally secret documents not made available to the public.
During the Watergate scandal in Washington, proof of the rumor was made possible because President Nixon had the bravado of appointing a reputable and most competent investigator who was given by the Government the necessary funds to hire legal and secret agents to uncover the facts in the many offices of the Government. When the private investigator collected incriminating facts, Mr. Nixon, obviously realizing his great mistake in having appointed an independent investigator, cancelled his assignment to continue the investigation.
This action was high-handed and no less than the Attorney-General of his Cabinet resigned from his position as a protest to the presidential action. Mr. Nixon could not maintain his stand against the barrage of criticisms that he received from members of Congress and from the press. In the end, he had to appoint a second independent investigator who turned out to be just as capable and above board as the first one. The result was the collection of sufficient incriminating evidences that became the basis of the impeachment proceedings by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representative of the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Nixon committed two mistakes that brought his downfall. They are the bravado of defending himself in public using the benefits of television time always extended to the President of the United States.
In the Philippines, our chief executives have generally allowed the rumor-mongering to go uncontested, realizing that rumors, in the end, cease to become news and the repetitions are self-defeating.
Secondly, Nixon kept and did not destroy the tape recordings of all the conversations he had in his Oval Office, which were the bases of the incriminating evidences against him. In the Philippines, we need to create a prosecuting power composed of an intermediate body, the members of which are representatives of living forces in the country, except for the Chairman who should be the leader of the biggest opposition party in Parliament (for the Federal Tribune of the People) and the leader of the largest opposition party in each of the five States for the State Tribune of the People. In the lower local levels, the draft prohibits the organization of political parties, but encourages the establishment of civic organizations to help the electorate in the local government choose who the best candidates are. This is a distinct feature of this draft. The political parties as such shall not be encouraged to reach the grassroots level, the various barrios, municipalities and provinces.
To maintain the status of private citizens of the members of the Tribune of the People in all the levels of the Government, their emoluments, as well as the expenses of their offices and their respective secretariat, shall be paid by their respective organizations.
The Government will absorb the expenses of the Tribune of the People itself, that would include the building where the Tribune of the People itself, furthermore including the building where the Tribune as a body will convene, and the secretariat of the body. Needless to say, all the expenses of the secretariats of the body in the form of personnel needed, including investigators, researches, and stenographers will be borne by the level of Government where the Tribune is operating.
We should not confuse the Tribune of the People with the Constitutional Tribunal. The Tribune is the prosecuting arm vested in an intermediate body. The Constitutional Tribunal is an official body, the highest moderating power of the Government, with judicial functions on public law and supervision over independent Commissions including the Tribune of the People. (To be continued/PN)
