AND so it came to pass that after much hemming and hawing, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo decided to scrap Executive Order 464. This was the executive order drawn up at the height of the inquiry into the "Hello Garci" conspiracy that effectively shut the traps of Cabinet officials and other high government officials, keeping them from appearing before investigative bodies to tell what they knew about the matters being investigated.

And why did she do it, why did she finally decide to cancel the nearly three-year-old EO?

Apparently because she was pressured into doing it. At least that's what it looks like on the surface. And thus, on the surface, it appears that when she was eyeball to eyeball with the rest of Philippine society, GMA blinked.

But did she really blink? Or did she in fact, well, wink?

The cancellation of EO 464 followed a meeting in some Metro Manila hotel between members of GMA's legal team, some members of her Cabinet, and some bishops whose identities are being withheld. Why? We'll pick that up some other time. But the point is that, following that meeting, GMA was apparently convinced by her legal team that she could afford to scrap EO 464 without having sleepless nights. The reason was simply put by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales - who, by the way, was the product of the same academic institution that produced Jun Lozada which tells you that an academic institution produces all sorts of people, heels as well as heroes - when Gonzales said, in effect, that there is always the principle of executive privilege that a Cabinet member can hide behind when forced to reveal what was discussed with the President of the Republic.

Now this is the crux of the matter before the Supreme Court. When can a member of the Executive branch invoke Executive privilege? And who determines whether executive privilege does apply?

The resulting decision we are waiting with bated breath from the Supreme Court will, hopefully, be our equivalent of the landmark US vs. Richard Nixon decision that was handed down by the US Supreme Court at the height of the investigation into the Watergate conspiracy. If you recall, Watergate referred to that part of Washington D.C. wherein the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee was housed. In the run-up to Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President - an organization with an unfortunate acronym, CREEP - masterminded a break-in into the DNC's offices which was discovered by a security guard. (Note how important security guards are in discovering break-ins, as in the Nixon case, or assassination plots, as in the recent allegedly discovered plot to kill GMA!).

Up to this point it appears from accounts of Watergate that Richard Nixon himself was not involved. But his involvement - and his impeachable offense - arose when, as proven by conversations in the Oval Office that Nixon himself had taped, Nixon got involved in the huge cover-up operations that followed. And just to recall: a special prosecutor named Archibald Cox was appointed to investigate Watergate; Cox demanded that Nixon hand over the tapes; Nixon refused, and ordered his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, respectively, to fire Cox; the two refused and preferred to resign; Cox was ultimately fired by Solicitor General Robert Bork and then went on to remark that "whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide."

After Cox's firing, a new special prosecutor in the person of Leon Jaworski was appointed. It was Jaworski who took the battle for the tapes all the way to the Supreme Court, because he knew that Nixon had discussed the Watergate break-in in one of those conversations. Citing executive privilege, Nixon opposed; but in a landmark decision handed down on July 24, 1974, the Court ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes, stating that "the generalized assertion of [executive] privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial". A month later, Nixon resigned.

Is the Neri case our version of the Jaworski vs. Nixon legal battle that became the celebrated United States vs. Nixon decision? As a student both of law and of politics, I surely hope so. The matter of having a clear-cut judicial ruling on executive privilege is clearly something we would greatly benefit from.

And so, while on the surface it may appear that GMA's blink is actually a wink, the issue is far from being over and laid to rest. Stay tuned!

***

Following reports that a Pulse Asia survey showed changes in public perception towards senators, I took a very unscientific poll of listeners and callers of the radio program "Pananaw sa DWWW 774 Khz" program that airs from Monday to Saturday, 7 to 8 a.m. The task I gave to the listeners was simple: give me a rating of plus, minus or equal to correspond to whether your view of thirteen senators I will name has actually improved, deteriorated or stayed the same. All in all there were 29 callers who rated 12 senators; one senator, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, was only rated by the last 28 callers as I missed her name with the first caller.

The results were as follows: Senator Edgardo Angara had a total of 1-0-28, meaning one positive rating, 0 = rating and 28 negative ratings. Miriam had a 1-1-26 rating total; Joker Arroyo, 3-0-26. They were the three with the lowest ratings.

Loren Legarda had a rating of 8-12-9; Francis Pangilinan rated 8-15-6; Manny Villar's was 14-10-5; Mar Roxas, 21-1-7; Jinggoy Estrada, 22-3-4; Nene Pimentel, 23-5-1. They consisted of the middle tier.

Jamby Madrigal had a rating of 26-1-2, meaning that 26 callers gave her a plus, one gave her an equal or same, and 2 gave her a negative. Ping Lacson also had a 26-1-2. Chiz Escudero had a rating of 26-0-3, while Blue Ribbon committee chair Alan Cayetano had the only perfect record of 29-0-0.