Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 00:09:00 03/27/2008
LAST SEPTEMBER, ex-socioeconomic planning secretary Romulo Neri refused to answer three questions raised during the Senate hearing on the National Broadband Network controversy, on the grounds that they were covered by executive privilege. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled 9-6 that Neri was right (and 10-5 that the Senate erred in citing him for contempt).
We join the many who find the majority decision to be gravely disappointing. In striking a balance between the competing interests of two coordinate branches of government, the high court in Neri v Senate Committee et al seems to have decided to enable an Executive department with an inglorious record of evading accountability. That record includes the remains of Executive Order 464, the "ashes" of which, Justice Conchita Carpio Morales wryly noted in her dissenting opinion, "have since fertilized the legal landscape on presidential secrecy."
The three questions Neri declined to answer are revealing in their simplicity, in their very logic. Did President Macapagal-Arroyo follow up on the NBN project? Did the President tell Neri to prioritize the proposal of Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE? Did the President approve the project after being told, by Neri, about the P200-million bribe allegedly offered by ex-Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos?
In his exhaustive and magisterial dissent, Chief Justice Reynato Puno devoted several pages to prove that the three questions are pertinent to the legislative inquiry the three Senate committees are conducting and to actual bills pending in the Senate. "The three assailed questions seek information on how and why the NBN-ZTE contract--an international agreement embodying a foreign loan for the undertaking of the NBN Project--was consummated," he reasoned. Declaring the three questions as covered by executive privilege, therefore, is to effectively undermine the work of legislation.
Justice Antonio Carpio, in his separate opinion, also makes short work of the three questions: These, "if answered by petitioner, will not disclose confidential Presidential communications. Neither will answering the questions disclose diplomatic secrets. Counsel for petitioner admitted this during the oral arguments ..."
We find it of no small import that, in a landmark case (a case of first impression, as Puno noted) where alleged diplomatic reasons are used to justify the exercise of the so-called presidential communications privilege, Neri signally failed to support his argument that the fate of our diplomatic relations with China was in fact at stake.
Above all, however, we are most concerned about the impact of the decision on an altogether more unforgiving law: the law of unintended consequences. Strip the ponencia written by Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro down to its basics, and we find that it can be used to justify wrongdoing.
The three Senate committees, the majority decision notes, "argue that a claim of executive privilege does not guard against a possible disclosure of a crime or wrongdoing. We see no dispute on this." But the decision then draws what seems to us to be an unnecessary but most consequential contrast between the Neri petition and the landmark US v Nixon case. "Unlike in Nixon, the information here is elicited, not in a criminal proceeding, but in a legislative inquiry."
What do our honorable justices mean? That when information about an alleged crime is elicited in a legislative inquiry, the claim of executive privilege can be used to make the information irrelevant? This strikes us as absurd. What are our lawmakers to do, if evidence of criminal activity surfaces during an inquiry in aid of legislation? Look the other way? Unfairly as it may seem, the ruling in Neri v Senate Committee et al will be summed up by many of our most law-abiding citizens as suggesting exactly that.
The majority decision makes much of the assertion that the "petitioner is not an unwilling witness." That seems to us to privilege Neri's one day of testimony, as against the numerous other instances when he failed to honor the Senate's invitation. Again, context tells us that this did not occur by happenstance; the Arroyo administration, by the admission of its own officials, has helped potential witnesses to avoid the Senate hearings on the NBN deal. There is a pattern of evasion, for all to see.
Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
To
subscribe to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper in the Philippines,
call +63 2 896-6000 for Metro Manila and Metro Cebu or email your subscription request here.
Factual errors? Contact the
Philippine Daily Inquirer's day desk.
Believe this article violates journalistic ethics?
Contact the
Inquirer's Reader's Advocate.
Or write The Readers' Advocate:
c/o
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Chino RocesAvenue corner Yague and Mascardo Streets,
Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines
Or fax nos. +63 2 8974793 to 94
![Zoom Image](javascript:popwin("http://images.inquirer.net/media/opinion/inquireropinion/editorial/images/pic-03270116300849.jpg", 640, 480))
Zoom
