“PRESUMPTION of regularity” is defined as “a principle applied in evidentiary evaluation that transactions made in the normal course of business are assumed to have been conducted in the usual manner unless there is evidence to prove otherwise.”

It is with this principle that the Representative Lourdes Arroyo (Negros Occidental), as chair of the Committee of Persons with Disabilities at the House of Representatives (HOR) is looking into the matter of a family with multiple members holding Persons with Disabilities (PWD) cards for being vision impaired and claiming discounts on their purchases.

In a radio show this morning Rep. Arroyo said that she has invited the whole family to the committee hearing to find out their side of the issues. The fact that they have those officially issued cards should not be cause to judge them as scammers or that the cards are fake to start with. But in the absence of contrary evidence, the cards are presumed real and their PWD status in order.

Of course, contrary evidence could mean attestation from the local government that it did not issue the cards or even that those were forgeries. So far, there seems to be no records of the cards being issued, but that will have to undergo proper scrutiny. But until then, the PWDs are innocent until proven guilty.

In the hearings on the franchise renewal of ABS-CBN the opposite is happening. In the Committees on Franchises and Good Government, grilling by Representatives Boying Remulla, Rodante Marcoleta, Mike Defensor, Elpidio Barzaga show the exact opposite. They charge that all records and statements of various government agencies, courts and regulators are suspect and not to be believed.

One glaring example was how they hit at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) on their statement and testimonies on the taxes paid and cleared by the agency for ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation and its group of companies. That’s P71.5 Billion in taxes paid by ABS-CBN in 17 years, records, filings and audit results attested to by BIR officers. But no, these congressmen won’t have it and went on to grill the agency and the company on each and every decimal point they could possibly question, hoping to find a misplaced centavo and cry out: “corruption! Corruption, I say!”

There too, is the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), that attested to its records and findings of the company and the fact that the ABS-CBN group of companies had a total of 11,000 jobs affected by its closure.

Even the judiciary – the courts and all the way up to the Supreme Court – were mired in doubt and disbelief by these congressmen when they questioned the wringer the Lopez family went through in reclaiming what was rightfully theirs. They insisted on finding the actual transcripts on the arbitration proceedings between the Cory Government and ABS-CBN, despite these being confirmed and attested to by the judiciary. Testimonies, records, documents attested to and accepted as regular and authentic by the Supreme Court were also put in doubt by the congressmen.

The Securities and Exchange (SEC), the regulator quasi-judicial body for the stock exchange and investment instruments of the government attested to the propriety and regularity of the Philippine Depository Receipts (PDR) issued by ABS-CBN Holdings Inc. and that these are investment instruments and are not shares of stock and ownership of ABS-CBN Broadcast Corp. Yet Remulla, Marcoleta, Barzaga and Defensor insist that, in their view, it isn’t so.

These are just very few examples. There were many more examples of official statements and documents submitted and attested to government regulators and agencies pooh-poohed by the congressmen.

The principle of presumption of regularity was just thrown out of the window. They have not presented any hard evidence contrary to what the agencies and government officials have presented. With that kind of appreciation of evidence, there is no way for anybody to defend themselves of unjust charges.

It’s like the Supreme Court, the highest court of the land, ruling and declaring you innocent of a crime, but congressmen Marcoleta, Defensor and Barzaga refuse to believe the ruling, and as far as they’re word is concerned you are guilty, and their evidence is their word and opinion. The great lawyers that they are, they believe in the contrary principle of presumption of irregularity.