Business Circuit

“Corruption can undermine government in major industrial countries as well as in developing countries. It destroys the wealth of industry for limited returns to the minority who perpetrate it.”- Linda Chalker, British politician, February 19,1999 speech

*  *  *

The President should be denied the right to invoke executive privilege. Even without it, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wantonly abuses her powers. One of the better examples is the Spratly deal.

She knows – or doesn’t she? – that she cannot enter into an executive agreement involving sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines. But her government signed the deal.

The act shows that in the Spratly deal, President Arroyo has no respect whatsoever for a co-equal, co-independent branch of government, the Legislature, the Senate. The agreement should be in the form of a treaty that the Senate has to ratify or reject. She allowed the executive agreement behind the back of the Senate.

Caught in the act, the President created a three-man legal team to study the dispute. My gut feel is that the team will recommend the scrapping of the deal.

That would not erase her possible liability for treason. If her government had not been caught making the deal, it would have gone on. In effect she would have ceded part of a disputed Philippine territorial waters to China for seismic study.

That crime is high treason.

Imagine how she can abuse her powers if she is given executive privilege. The grant of that privilege, as far as the Spratly deal is concerned, is conspiracy to commit treason.

It turns out that part of the disputed area that China was allowed to explore has been committed to an exploration firm in the United Kingdom. I know of at least two Filipino firms which took a risk by joining in.

Have these companies lost their rights to that area which is also for exploration? They have. President Arroyo gave it away to China, obviously without even consulting, much less telling the UK firm which was granted the original right.

The British Embassy has not said one word about how President Arroyo usurped the rights of the UK firm and its Filipino partners. I would not be surprised if the British embassy files a diplomatic protest. It has a duty to protect its citizens and firms operating in the Philippines.

The usurpation of the rights of a foreign company by the President herself has a heavy impact on the regime’s policy of attracting foreign investments.

Give President Arroyo executive privilege and we will see for ourselves how much farther she will go in violating a commitment. In fact, violating the Constitution.

The privilege, if granted by the Supreme Court, will be used as a mantle to hide the truth. In fact, it may be used – she is already invoking it – to shield a crime, most heinous of which is treason.

Romulo Neri’s lips will forever be sealed. He will be prevented from telling the Senate and the people why he objected to the ZTE contract when he was director of the NEDA.

For objecting to an indefensible deal, Neri was transferred to the Commission on Higher Education whose chairman, according to the law, must have a Ph.D. degree. To skip the requirement, Neri was named acting chairman.

Back in the days when the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) was composed of lawyers who were defenders of the Constitution, the question of executive privilege would have been a heated debate with the Supreme Court.

Philconsa has since then changed. It has so changed that even I, a non-lawyer, became a member, although I did not apply.

If the complexion or quality of membership had not so deteriorated, it would have moved heaven and earth, and maybe even intervened with the Supreme Court, to stop the grant of the privilege.

Now it is eerily quiet. The silence of Philconsa clearly means its members support the grant of the privilege.

The Philconsa has lost its glory. It used to be the uncompromising guardian of the 1935 Constitution.

We also have the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. Its members, like all lawyers, are sworn to defend the Constitution. It is not saying anything either about the grant or denial of executive privilege now pending in the Supreme Court.

The integrity of the IBP was also tarnished in the case of Leonard de Vera, the Filipino lawyer in California, who would have been disbarred if he had not struck a deal with the California bar by returning to the Philippines.

The IBP made him a member, in fact, an officer.

There is confusion over the rules of the Senate regarding hearings, issuance of warrants of arrest, etc. The Senate did not publish their rules in the 14th Congress. Since non-publication is a requirement, the rules are deemed void.

But that is confusing the issue. While I maintain that granting the President executive privilege will deny the Senate the powers to investigate and be fed with information for remedial legislation, the Neri issue is a Constitutional issue.

It has no bearing on the rules of the Senate, whether they are void or not.

Strangely, none of the senators is arguing this point.

In fact, they are not even planning to petition the Court for the inhibition of two associate justices. Justice Renato Corona placed his independence under suspicion when his wife signed a manifesto supporting President Arroyo. He is not as clean as Caesar’s wife, so to speak.

Newly-sworn in Associate Justice Arturo Brion should also inhibit himself, too. He did not participate in the oral arguments on the Neri case.

It is wrong to presume that he knows as much as his peers. Justice Brion has hardly seven calendar days to sink his teeth into the subject. President Arroyo should have exacted a commitment from Justice Brion that he would not vote on the issue precisely because he does not have the time to study Constitutional case.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Lessons of the past

I guess previous presidents were all aware that they had executive privilege. All of them performed remarkably better than President Arroyo.

But none of them ever issued an executive order asking the Supreme Court to set jurisprudence on the privilege.

My guess is that all of the former presidents knew that the Supreme Court, being the interpreter of the Constitution and the laws, open themselves and their mistakes to the tribunal.

That made them extra-careful in issuing executive orders that might be constitutionally indefensible.

The present president, who, it must be stressed will rule country for nine years without a mandate until 2010, is of a different type. She knows the Constitution gives her more powers than the two other co-equal branches of government.

But she wants more. I would personally support the grant of executive privilege if the record of governance of President Arroyo tells me that she has done so well and can do more with the exercise of executive privilege.

But it was only in her inability to curb corruption and human rights violations and in her successful attempt to steal the election that she performed with honors.

She has a shameful, black record of performance. If it were otherwise, why do surveys say that she is the most corrupt president in this part of the world?

Why did she cheat or steal her second term after grabbing the first one? Think about it.