House sets Celiz, Badoy free due to humanitarian reasons 

Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz (left) and Lorraine Badoy (Facebook)

SMNI program anchors Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz and Lorraine Badoy were allowed to walk free from detention in the House of Representatives on late Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 12 due to humanitarian reasons.

The decision to release the two resulted from a closed-door hearing of the Committee on Legislative Franchises, chaired by Parañaque City 2nd district Rep. Gus Tambunting.

The Tambunting panel was the one that cited Celz and Badoy for contempt in a hearing last Dec. 5. This came with a punishment of detention within House grounds.

“Ang desisyon po ay papalayin at a [for] humanitarian reasons (The decision is to let them go for humanitarian reasons),” Tambunting told House reporters.

“This is a, they are free to go, this is not a furlough. We’ve asked them already to, we lifted their detention. And if they are needed in the future, we will just call them back,” he said.

In all, Celiz and Badoy were held in House custody for eight days; in seven of those days, the two held a hunger strike in protest of their “illegal detention”.

As of this posting, the two anchors of the program “Laban Kasama Ang Bayan” were awaiting clearance by medical staff. After that, they are free to leave the House.

The two served as resource persons in the legislative franchises panel’s ongoing inquiry on the alleged franchise violations of SMNI. The probe was triggered after they brought up during a Nov. 27 episode of their program the allegation that House Speaker Martin Romualdez had spent a whopping P1.8 billion on his travels.

The allegation was proven false in a Nov. 30 hearing, where the House’s financial department said that the Office of the Speaker’s travel expenses from January to October 2023 only amounted to P4.3 million.

In a Dec. 5 hearing of the panel, a defiant Celiz refused to name his source for the fake news. This led to his being cited for contempt.

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The committee handed down a similar citation against Badoy when she was suspected of withholding information in the probe.

As per Tambunting, the discussion on whether or not to release the anchors was a contentious one.

“Medyo mahaba po yung diskusyon. Syempre mayroong hindi sumasang-ayon, mayroong sumasang-ayon, merong naga-abstain sa discussion (The discussion was long. Of course there were those against it, those for it, and those who abstained).

“I had to call the vote as to what is the decision of the committee,” noted the Parañaque solon.

“So alam po niyo, Pasko po ngayon at alam po niyo for humanitarian reasons, hindi naman kailangan na yan ay magkaroon pa ng humingi pa ng sorry o anoman. E kami na ho mismo ang nag-decide na sila ay pakawalan pareho,” he added.

(So you know, it’s Christmas season, and for humanitarian reasons, they don’t need to make an apology or anything. That’s why we decided ourselves to release them.)