MANILA — Lawyer Eldrige Marvin Aceron has filed a petition for mandamus and certiorari urging the Supreme Court of the Philippines to compel the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to release the draft of its original committee report on the investigation into alleged flood control anomalies.
The petition raises three questions of first impression that the Court has yet to definitively resolve. It invokes the constitutional right to information under Article III, Section 7, and cites the principle of maximum disclosure as recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
It also challenges the Senate legal counsel’s reliance on executive privilege cases — all of them — to justify a legislative committee’s refusal to release its own findings to the citizens it represents.
ia/xfiles
