This inevitable question came in the wake of the highest tribunal’s decision – described as "dangerously crippling" by a noted Constitutionalist – stopping the Senate from exercising its power to conduct investigations in aid of legislation, particularly the ZTE-NBN mess.

The issue arose when Malacañang invoked executive privilege to prevent a key witness from testifying about his conversations with Arroyo about the shameless scandal involving her, the First Spouse and some executive officials. The tribunal by a vote of nine to six ruled in favored of the Palace.

This is why the Senate, under Manny Villar’s guard, is seeking a reconsideration of that decision. "It does not speak well of a system of checks and balances that is supposed to be in place," he said. "What we are seeing now is any president has the liberty to do anything he or she pleases because there will be more need for explaining her official actions."

Senate President Villar’s allusion to the system of checks and balances is most timely. As an important part of the Constitution, it limits the powers of the three branches of government. This way no one branch becomes too powerful. Each branch checks the power of the other branches to make sure that the power is balanced between them. This is precisely the primary reason for the Senate’s motion for reconsideration of the tribunal’s decision, a startling ruling that would bizarrely immunize official acts of Arroyo and her presidential advisers from congressional scrutiny.

He was closely followed by former SC Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban who was aghast at the decision. In his Sunday "With Due Respect" newspaper column, he wrote: "I believe that the majority decision failed to check presidential abuses; worse, it impudently expanded executive privilege to cover wrongdoings." And he added, acidly, "… It unreasonably suppressed the truth!"

The implication of the decision, according to Jesuit Fr. Joaquin Bernas, noted constitutional expert, "would revolutionize the doctrine of executive privilege in a manner that can affect all other investigations" by the Senate. And he warned that "it can cripple efforts to battle official corruption, which is a world-recognized specialty of the Philippines."

These uncommonly strong critical reactions to the high court’s decision, not to mention those of other students of law and politics, are shared by many Filipinos long concerned about the present state of official corruption in the Arroyo administration ever since it unlawfully seized power over seven years ago.

Of course, there are other contentious issues that the tribunal must clarify arising from its interpretation of the concept of executive privilege which originated in the United States.

Yes, it does not exist at all in both the Philippine and US constitutions. There is no sentence or clause mentioning it. It was merely implied from other presidential powers. It is claimed by the president and other members of the executive branch to resist interventions by the legislative and the judicial branches of government. And it is considered an element of the separation of powers doctrine.

However, what the Constitution expressly provides is the power of the Senate and the House of Representatives to investigate in aid of legislation, such as what the Senate’s three committees led by the Blue Ribbon Committee now investigating the ZTE-NBN contract stained by accusations of bribery and other irregularities.

Still another unexplained issue is why the tribunal – rather the majority of nine associate justices – considered conversations of Gloria with witness Romulo Neri, then director general of the NEDA that played a key role in the scandalous deal, were covered by the doctrine of executive privilege without demanding proof from the Palace that the disclosures would impair diplomatic and economic relations between the Philippines and China.

Didn’t those nine jurists know that the US Supreme Court had rejected that notion of "absolute privilege" as against the larger public interest in obtaining the truth in the context of a criminal offense? In the instant case of the ZTE-NBN mess, weren’t they aware of the public knowledge that it was replete with charges of bribery in the highest levels of the Arroyo administration?