‘Executive privilege surely
was not meant to hide criminal behavior.’
Tomorrow the Supreme Court is ex-pected
to come out with its ruling on former Planning secretary Romulo Neri’s petition
that the arrest warrant issued by the Senate for his failure to attend hearings
on the national broadband network be quashed.
In refusing to appear, Neri said the three questions the
Senate wants him to answer involve conversations with President Arroyo which he
said are covered by executive privilege. The questions are: (1) Did the
President show any undue interest in the national broadband network project? (2)
Did the President direct Neri to prioritize the NBN project? (3) Did she order
the continuance of the project despite allegations of bribery?
Answering the questions would hardly jeopardize national
security or diplomatic relations. But Neri claims a more expansive coverage of
executive privilege. This is based on the Palace position that the Executive
department could not perform its tasks if discussions over its decisions were
open to public scrutiny. There is also this subsidiary claim that Cabinet
members would not be open and frank if they knew their advice would later be
subject to second-guessing by people outside the President’s official family.
The Supreme Court earlier ruled that Executive Order 464 was
unconstitutional in extending the mantle of executive privilege to practically
everybody in the Executive department on the say-so of the executive secretary
or of other Cabinet officials. The ruling, however, upheld executive privilege
insofar as the Palace invokes it on behalf of Cabinet members.
This is how things now stand. The Neri petition is an
opportunity for the Supreme Court to revisit EO 464 and refine the doctrine of
executive privilege.
The issue is the abusive exercise of executive privilege
which EO 464 clearly was. In the NBN deal, there have been allegations of
large-scale bribery. Neri himself testified that he was offered P200 million by
former elections chair Benjamin Abalos in exchange for allowing the NBN project
to be undertaken as a direct government undertaking instead of a
build-operate-transfer arrangement. Neri said he informed Arroyo of the bribe
offer but was told nonetheless to approve the project.
Other testimonies tagged Arroyo’s husband Mike as among those
who stood to receive a "commission" from the project.
In the light of these allegations, invocation of executive
privilege could only be interpreted as an attempt to cover up wrongdoing.
Executive privilege surely was not meant to hide criminal
behavior. But that’s a layman’s take on the doctrine. The high tribunal might
have a different view.
We’ll know tomorrow.
