The argument against Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Imee Marcos and Rodolfo Marcoleta is not that they held a hearing. Legislative inquiries are a legitimate constitutional tool. The argument is that by pushing a politically explosive hearing involving the testimony of the 18 former Marines during the Senate’s sine die period and amid a bitter leadership dispute, they may have exposed witnesses to maximum public risk while offering minimum institutional protection.

Before making that argument, however, a legal distinction is important.

There is no Supreme Court ruling that automatically declares every committee hearing conducted during a sine die adjournment “illegal.” Senate committees often continue investigations between plenary sessions because committee authority may survive adjournment depending on Senate rules and authorizing resolutions. Even former Senate President Franklin Drilon recently noted that committee work may continue despite sine die adjournment. (Inquirer.net)

The stronger criticism is therefore institutional rather than purely legal.

The hearing occurred while the Senate itself was engulfed in a leadership crisis. The chamber had been deadlocked over questions involving the legitimacy of Senate leadership and committee control, including the Blue Ribbon Committee. Questions regarding committee authority and jurisdiction were already politically contested. (Reuters)

What makes this troubling is the potential asymmetry of consequences.

If allegations are aired during a disputed proceeding, the senators enjoy one of the strongest protections in Philippine constitutional law: the Speech or Debate Clause. Article VI, Section 11 provides that no senator shall be questioned elsewhere for speeches or debates in Congress or in any committee thereof. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the breadth of this protection, extending it to committee proceedings that are part of legislative functions. (Supreme Court E-Library)

The witnesses do not enjoy the same blanket immunity.

If their testimony later becomes the subject of challenge, scrutiny, contradiction, or reputational attack, they bear the consequences personally. The politicians get constitutional armor. The witnesses get exposure.

That is where the real criticism of Cayetano and Marcoleta lies.

The 18 former Marines were not the beneficiaries of this hearing. They were the instruments of it.

If the objective was to establish facts that could withstand legal, historical, and public scrutiny, then the hearing should have been conducted under conditions that were beyond challenge on procedural grounds. It should have been held when Senate authority was unquestioned, committee jurisdiction was settled, and records could not later be attacked as products of a disputed proceeding.

Instead, the hearing took place amid institutional chaos.

The result is paradoxical: the more explosive the testimony, the greater the need for procedural legitimacy. Yet the hearing was conducted precisely when questions about Senate authority were at their highest.

The Supreme Court has consistently emphasized that legislative investigations must comply with the Constitution and the body’s own rules. In cases involving Senate inquiries, including the landmark Neri and Blue Ribbon cases, the Court stressed that congressional investigations derive their legitimacy from adherence to established procedures and authorized legislative purposes. (Supreme Court E-Library)

That principle matters because testimony is not self-authenticating. Institutions give testimony weight. Remove institutional certainty, and even credible testimony becomes vulnerable to attack.

The tragedy for the 18 former Marines is that they may now find themselves carrying the burden of a political battle they did not create.

If critics challenge the hearing’s legitimacy, it will not be Cayetano’s or Marcoleta’s credibility that is placed under the microscope. It will be the witnesses. If the proceedings are questioned, it will be their statements that become contested. If the hearing is later characterized as politically motivated, it is their reputations that become collateral damage.

The senators will move on to the next hearing, the next press conference, the next political fight.

The witnesses will remain attached to every word they uttered. They may even be charged in court for utterences made against persons they accused of malfeasance. 

That is why the issue is bigger than legality.

A responsible legislator’s first obligation is not to create headlines. It is to protect the integrity of the fact-finding process and the people who participate in it.

When testimony concerns alleged corruption, military personnel, and matters of enormous public interest, the duty becomes even heavier. Witnesses should be brought into a forum whose authority is unquestioned, whose records are beyond dispute, and whose procedures cannot later be dismissed as products of factional warfare.

By choosing a moment when the Senate itself was consumed by a legitimacy crisis, Cayetano and Marcoleta may have achieved the opposite.

They generated publicity.

But publicity is not the same thing as credibility.

And if the ultimate casualty is the perceived reliability of the 18 former Marines’ testimony, then the hearing will have done precisely the people it purported to protect the greatest harm of all. The allegations may dominate headlines today, but history rarely remembers the spectacle. It remembers whether the institution conducting the inquiry was worthy of the truth it sought to uncover.