By Junex Doronio
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS have developed when Senator Richard “Dick” Gordon on Wednesday joined retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and several lawyers, priests, and law students in asking the Supreme Court to declare null and void the order and circular that covers the disbursement of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF).
Maharlika NuMedia gathered that the respondents were Vice President Sara Duterte, Office of the Executive Secretary, Senate of the Philippines, House of Representatives, Department of Education, Department of Budget and Management, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Governance Commission for GOCCs, and Commission on Audit (COA).
Aside from Gordon and Carpio, the other petitioners were a certain Atty. Howard Calleja and JP Calleja.
In a 45-page petition for certiorari and mandamus, the petitioners asked the High Tribunal to declare null and void Executive Order No. 2 and Joint Circular No. 2015-01, which provides the guidelines in the disbursement and liquidation of confidential funds, for being repugnant to the 1987 Constitution.
It also asked the SC to prohibit the respondents or any person, entity, member, officer, employee, or representative from enforcing the EO and joint circular.
Gordon’s becoming “openly anti-Duterte” seemed perplexing.
To recall, writer Antonio J. Montalvan II in his September 13, 2021 Rappler column noted that “after only six hearings of his justice committee on the spate of extrajudicial killings under Duterte, Gordon made the most fantastic pronouncement of his political career in only two words: ‘Definitely not.'”
What he meant by this was, former president Rodrigo Duterte, as “definitely not guilty of extrajudicial killings.”
It was the second time the former senator lawyered for Duterte. He also acted as enabler of then Sen. Leila de Lima’s purported drug links that led to her eventual incarceration of almost seven years.
De Lima was recently granted a P300,000 bail.
(AI/MNM)