MANILA — The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has urged the Supreme Court to junk the petition seeking to compel President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to disclose his medical records and undergo a hair follicle drug test, arguing that the case has no constitutional basis and amounts to a mere “fishing expedition.”
In its comment filed before the high court, the OSG defended Marcos and Executive Secretary Ralph Recto, insisting that former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez failed to establish any legal ground that would obligate the President to publicly release details of his medical examinations.
“Stripped clean of bombast and rhetoric, this Petition is nothing more than a fishing expedition,” Solicitor General Darlene Marie Berberabe said in the filing submitted on behalf of Marcos and Recto.
The OSG argued that Alvarez incorrectly relied on Section 7, Article III of the Constitution, stressing that the constitutional provision applies only in situations involving a serious illness that may affect the President’s ability to govern.
“It is a far stretch to construe this provision as creating a positive duty on the part of the President to submit himself to unwarranted procedures or to any other form of compelled medical examination,” Berberabe said.
The government’s chief lawyer also pointed to an earlier Supreme Court ruling involving former president Rodrigo Duterte, where a similar petition seeking disclosure of the chief executive’s health condition was dismissed for lack of a prima facie case for mandamus.
“The Honorable Court noted that the claims of petitioner therein regarding the health of then President Duterte were merely based on what he gathered from online news articles,” Berberabe added.
Earlier, the Supreme Court directed Marcos and Recto to respond to Alvarez’s petition, which also sought to compel the President to undergo a hair follicle drug test./PN
