It is of no moment to any ordinary Juan de la Cruz what the rules of either the Senate or House of Representatives are with regard to the conduct of a legislative inquiry wherein resource persons are invited or invariably summoned or subpoenaed. The normal and only expectation in any democratic society is the guarantee that their basic human rights are not trampled upon in the course of what tends to be an inquisitorial procedure.

The problem of either chamber is when some of its members tend to confuse the distinction between a resource person and a witness to the extent of establishing that such terms are one and the same thing and therefore may be used interchangeably. However, if used in this self-serving context, it tends to throw the proceedings into chaos.

Against this backdrop, there should be a call from quarters outside of the Senate or the House to institutionalize a “bill of rights” that would breathe new life into future legislative inquiries, purportedly held in aid of legislation. This way, resource persons would willingly comply with the invitation, may even find pleasure or honor in being present, and become more effective in dishing out certain facts and data — free of threats, duress, more so the unnecessary display of impertinence, arrogance and ignorance by some of the chambers’ members.

As the committee hearings are televised and broadcast in real time on social media platforms, it behooves upon the legislature as an important branch of government in the context of a vibrant democracy that inquiries not pierce the thin membrane that preserves the sanctity of rights and privileges every decent citizen of this country must enjoy and the Constitution guarantees.

Without risk of being in error, in broad strokes, the most violated rights of any individual appearing before the “honorable” men and women are the right against self-incrimination, the right to due process of law, and the right to liberty. Disconcertingly, why detain or jail them in a sudden burst of political tantrums?

This attitudinal problem that appears like legislators are digging graves, building jails, transforming their enclave into a detention center, basking in their privilege to cite anyone in contempt lends itself to anarchy, disorder, and chaos. Whomsoever they cause to be cited in contempt, more so detained or otherwise jailed for as long as they capriciously so decide, becomes for that individual a life-changing experience in an unsettling way.

Unless and until this “bad manners and wrong conduct” displayed in wild abandon is applied the brakes, no one can enjoy such freedom as we normally know and enjoy as citizens of this ill-fated republic. Perhaps we can only find solace or effective contra-remedy by intelligently choosing only national and local leaders similarly like-minded as we are — peace loving, law abiding, decent and free.

It is quite unfortunate to have the likes of some partylist congresswomen and congressmen who go beyond their oversight function for their own interest, totally shelving the greater good of the greatest number or summum bonum in exchange for instant fame or notoriety.

The sooner a relevant piece of legislation could be drafted to balance the objective of the legislature to fulfill its oversight duty, on the one hand, and the rights of resource persons and witnesses, on the other, only then can it be the best of both worlds. Absent that, the legislators in both chambers will be putting large society issues where their mouths aren’t.

The ritual of most legislative inquiries has gone to excess that not a few observers have labeled them grand zarzuelas with constellations of rabid inquisitors, character assassins and fly-by-night or Google-produced pseudo-lawyers dominating the national conversation or discourse.

Let us refrain from turning the public hearings into a home for clowns in a circus or actors and actresses in a theater guild. Stop this arrogant display of power!