Ad hoc committees and commissions: No need for new panels for old sins

At 87 years old, after spending six decades in small-town courtrooms watching ordinary citizens fight for basic justice, I have developed a severe allergy to grand words and temporary fixes.

Today, Manila is buzzing again. We have senators posing for cameras in high-stakes impeachment proceedings, House prosecutors posturing, political dynasties trading blows over massive flood control scandals, and now, well-meaning luminaries like former International Criminal Court Judge Raul Pangalangan and Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David organizing a brand-new “Truth Commission.” Everyone wants to build a new stage. Nobody wants to sweep the courtroom floor.

Ask any ordinary Filipino what they think of these legislative inquiries or this newly announced commission, and you will get a tired shrug. Most citizens are not apolitical out of ignorance, but out of long, painful experience. We know that behind the posturing of politicians, the press releases of investigative offices, and the moral pronouncements of temporary task forces lies a plain truth: none of these temporary stages ever build permanent justice. They give us political theater, while leaving us with the same weak statutory tools we had yesterday.

Whenever a massive scandal breaks—whether it is billions washed away in ghost flood control projects or political bloodletting in high office—our leaders react with an automatic instinct: they form a committee. When a committee fails, they form a bigger one and call it a “commission.” It is a noble gesture, but to a country lawyer who has watched this republic try to reinvent the wheel since 1946, it feels like the same old habit: treating a broken administrative engine by hanging a brand-new banner over the workshop.

We seem to operate with a permanent “new kid on the block” mindset—a desire to prove we know how to run a country while insisting that our problems are so unique that only our improvised, homegrown fixes can solve them. We forget a basic truth: human progress stands on the shoulders of past knowledge and established institutions.

Our problem in the Philippines has never been a shortage of committees, task forces, or truth commissions. Our problem is a persistent refusal to do the quiet, unglamorous work of enforcing the permanent laws and systems we already have.

Consider the statutory architecture we already possess. We have a Commission on Audit constitutionally mandated to track every centavo of public funds. We have the Office of the Ombudsman created specifically to investigate and prosecute official corruption. We have the Sandiganbayan and regular courts to try these offenses. Yet every time a crisis erupts, our political and civic leaders act as if these institutions do not exist, bypassing them to assemble new fact-finding bodies. Or worse, they organize street protests and rallies hoping to do another Cardinal Sin or an Edsa 5.

When you create a parallel panel, you do not strengthen justice—you erode it. An ad hoc “Truth Commission” has no independent prosecutorial power; it can only recommend. It wastes time, competes with statutory agencies for evidence and headlines, and creates jurisdictional confusion. When the public focus shifts, the commission dissolves, leaving the permanent institutions just as neglected as before. Every time the house catches fire, our leaders assemble a new study group to discuss the nature of the flame instead of turning on the existing fire hose.

A young republic does not mature by constantly building new stages for political grandstanders and legal luminaries. It matures when it develops the humility to rely on established systems, enforce its statutory laws with consistency, and focus on steady administrative competence rather than temporary public spectacles. Until we abandon the habit of creating new panels for old sins, we will continue to get what we have always gotten: a lot of noise on stage, and a house still in ruins.

ATTY. JAMES D. LANSANG,

jeemsdee@yahoo.com