SEN. Joker Arroyo yesterday twitted President Arroyo for creating a legal team to study the possibility of revoking Executive Order 464, saying the team's members "are the very same officials who have been misinterpreting the Supreme Court ruling" on the order.

"What is there to revoke, or to study, or to revisit, or to re-examine in EO 464?" Senator Arroyo said, saying that the Supreme Court has already laid down the parameters of what the Executive and Congress can and cannot do on congressional investigations.

The Supreme Court has ruled as unconstitutional portions of EO 464 which required key officials to seek permission of the President before attending legislative inquiries. But the tribunal upheld the right of Cabinet members to invoke executive privilege when called before the legislature on issues that could jeopardize national security and diplomatic relations.

Executive privilege is being invoked by, among other officials, Romulo Neri, acting chairman of the Commission on Higher Education and former chairman of the National Economic Development Authority. Neri has been refusing to appear again at the Senate which is investigating the alleged anomalous national broadband network project.

The members are Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera, chief presidential legal counsel Sergio Apostol, deputy executive secretary for legal matters Manuel Gaite, and government corporate counsel Alberto Agra.

The President created the team following the call of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines for Arroyo not to prevent her officials from testifying on the alleged anomalies in the NBN deal, particularly by removing impediments such as EO 464.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the team would submit its recommendations to the President next week.

Senator Arroyo said there would be no problem if both Malacañang and the Senate would follow what the Supreme Court said of E0 464.

"Unfortunately, both sides are engaged in a battle not for good governance but for political supremacy, and the Supreme Court is becoming the naive victim of this power play and being baited to respond to every disagreement between the two political departments of government," he said.

He said that at this point, it is no big deal for the team members "to conveniently reverse themselves to make the President look good."

"And supposing the Executive capitulates on EO 464, will the Senate tri-committees put a closure to the investigation? No, it will continue and prolong the investigation indefinitely under the guise that it will not stop until it finds the eternal truth which even courts find difficult to achieve," he said.

Sen. Mar Roxas said the President can save the Republic, the institution of the presidency, and the country from "institutional crisis" by lifting EO 464.

He said the President should also instruct all her officials to attend investigations. If they refused to attend, the President should suspend them, he said.

"Our country is broken. The institutions have low credibility. The executive itself has low respect from the people. And we need to fix this. Ang ating mga kababayan, yung tiwala nila sa ating pamahalaan, sa ating mag opisyales ay mababang-mababa na o kaya wala na," he said.

Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said scrapping EO 464 would be futile as the executive privilege of a President is embedded in the 1987 Constitution.

Macalintal said "executive privilege" as defined by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Senate vs Ermita is "the power of the government and the right of a president to withhold information form Congress, the courts and ultimately the public."

"Abolition of EO 464 will not diminish a president's right to exercise his executive privilege which exempts him or his Cabinet members from testifying in Congress without his consent," he said. - JP Lopez and Jocelyn Montemayor