By Christine Herrera

Rep. Edcel Lagman of Albay refused to entertain questions from House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Roilo Golez Tuesday night, casting doubt on his colleague?s intellectual integrity.

?Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus [False in one thing, false in all]. I refuse to be further interpellated by Representative Golez as I cannot anymore respect his intellectual integrity,? Lagman declared during plenary debates on House Bill 5043, which seeks to establish national policy on reproductive health, family planning and population development.

Lagman?s co-authors Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin would instead debate with Golez, whose questioning has taken much of House?s time for the past two weeks.

Advocates and supporters of reproductive health bill condemn the ?deceitful tactics? used by Golez on the controversial bill, which promotes family planning.

?Golez is deliberately misleading the public, especially his colleagues in Congress, by using distorted data and passing them off as official statistics. By persistently relying on manufactured and misrepresented data, Golez obviously just wants to derail the passage of the reproductive health bill,? said Ramon San Pascual, executive director of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation Inc.

During plenary debates last week and Tuesday night, Golez presented data that he claimed came from official sources such as the Health Department, National Statistics Office and Food and Nutrition Research Institute.

Lagman tried to validate Golez?s claims but these agencies denied they were the source of Golez?s information that distorts data on maternal mortality ratio and contraceptives prevalence rate.

Golez was forced to admit to the plenary that his source was a book published by Social Watch, a non-government organization.

Lagman could only shake his head and left the rostrum after declaring he could no longer respect Golez?s intellectual integrity.