House panel to review detained hosts’ appeal

The House Committee on Legislative Franchises yesterday said it will study whether to grant the camp of Sonshine Media Network International hosts Jeffrey Celiz and Dr. Lorraine Badoy's appeal against the panel's contempt order that led to their detention.

Parañaque Rep. Gus Tambunting, the panel's chairperson, told reporters he would defer to the committee members' decision on whether to grant Celiz and Badoy's plea for a furlough during the holidays.

"We will have to see. I do not want to preempt the decision of the committee, but all of these are options right now," Tambunting said.

Meanwhile, Badoy and Celiz are on the third day of their hunger strike in "protest of the travesty" of the House proceedings last Tuesday, where they were cited in contempt.

Badoy said she remained unfazed by the "weight of the injustice and the oppression committed" against her and Celiz.

"Oppression is oppression in whatever form or shape. This is why we must fight it. We get the government we deserve. And if we remain silent, if we don't push back because the powerful boot is on our faces, then we deserve the petty tyrants who will, no doubt, run amuck and eat our children whole," she said.

To recall, House committee members cited both SMNI anchors in contempt for "acting disrespectfully and refusing to answer relevant questions" during the inquiry in the lower chamber.

In her statement Friday, Badoy stressed that her and Celiz's current situation in the detention facility won't silence them.

"Never before have I valued my rights and my personal freedoms like I do now that they have been taken away from me unjustly. Never before have I despised oppression down to the deepest depths of my soul than I do now that I am on the receiving end of the grave abuse of power by the most powerful on an ordinary citizen," she said.

"But I am standing tall, and so is Ka Eric because we have great faith in the Filipino people. This is not empty rhetoric. I saw the wondrous miracle of how we, as a people, brought the CPP-NPA-NDF down to its knees," she added.

"My stomach is empty, but my heart is full of faith and great courage. You know why? Simple. Because I am a Filipino," she said.

Committee's decision

Tambunting said the committee's decision would depend entirely on whether Celiz would come clean about his source in the Senate who fed him "false" information about the House's travel expenses.

"We will have to wait for them because right now, what we want is for him to identify the source. He named it as an employee of the Senate, and I think he is duty bound to ensure that the person exists and is not just a fiction," Tambunting said.

SMNI legal officer, Atty. Mark Tolentino, said on Thursday they would ask the committee to consider granting, "for humanitarian reasons", the detained anchors a furlough during the holidays.