SC missed the issue
The nine jurists who upheld the right of President Arroyo to
executive privilege missed the entire point of the issue. The issue is a
Constitutional one in the sense that it borders on how much more power the
President can exercise beyond what is allowed in the Charter.
Here they came saying that withholding the privilege might
affect diplomatic relations with China.
In this sense, the Court confined the deliberation and
subsequent ruling to the irrelevant issue of the ZTE deal with China instead of
resolving a Constitutional dispute.
There are better arguments, if you ask me. Diplomatic
relations with China have absolutely nothing to do with the dispute.
There is no constitutional question in the country’s
relations – diplomatic, investment, culture, etc. with China. China is not the
issue.
Ruling admits of fraud
By saying that revealing the conversation between the
President and Romulo Neri could or may jeopardize diplomatic relations puts
China on the spot.
Why would diplomatic relations be affected if Neri should
tell the Senate, let us say, that he told the President that China or the
company involved in the broadband project offered fat bribes?
Or more importantly, Filipino officials, Benjamin Abalos in
particular, solicited a bribe?
If ZTE offered a bribe, the Chinese government should
investigate its officials. If Abalos and company took the bribe as reported,
Malacañang should file a complaint for bribery.
The ruling insults China because it hints that ZTE offered a
bribe which executive privilege now hides. It presumes that China runs its
government like Gloria Arroyo runs hers.
We would have helped China if Neri was allowed to divulge his
conversation with the President. That would have served the useful purpose of
helping China punish its crooks, if any, while we refuse to punish ours. The
issue does not concern diplomatic relations. If there were, Foreign Secretary
Alberto Romulo would have taken it up with the President. Not Neri.
Senate rules
In the matter of Senate rules on procedures (in
investigations), Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro even went as far
as charging the Senate with abusing its authority to issue a warrant of arrest
against Neri.
It is the opinion of 10 jurists (as against five) that the
Senate cannot issue a warrant of arrest in relation to executive privilege since
it failed to publicly issue its rules for the current year.
The previous rules were published. I imagine they are not
remarkably different. Definitely, the rules do not specify who will chair the
Blue Ribbon committee and who will be its members.
I have to be told that non-publication of the rules for this
session stops the Senate from issuing warrants of arrest or from sending
summonses to government officials, in this case Neri.
I have always thought that in the absence of new unpublished
rules, the previous published ones will apply. Justice De Castro does not think
that way. And she is a good lawyer.
Interpreting the Charter
I have always believed, even if I am a mere high school
graduate, that the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution in the name
of public welfare.
Never have I heard that a Constitutional issue was resolved
on fears that the diplomatic relations of a sovereign country such as the
Philippines with another may be jeopardized or impaired.
What would have been the opinion or ruling of the court
regarding allegations of fraud in contracts with other countries? Executive
privilege must be allowed to prevent the souring of diplomatic relations or to
prevent a diplomatic faux pax?
The ruling should be sweeping. If the Court fears that
diplomatic relations may be jeopardized, these fears should not be confined to
China and its ZTE which, I was told, is a private company controlled by a
relative of the president of China.
In that sense, the ruling protects China and ZTE and prevents
Neri from revealing the discussion with President Arroyo regarding the contract.
That’s neither fish nor fowl.
Protecting the President
In her defense of Shylock’s victim in Shakespeare’s Merchant
of Venice, Portia says of the quality of mercy as befitting "the throned
monarch better than his crown; /His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
/The attribute to awe and majesty, /Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of
kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway, ‘It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself."
But in its ruling the Court never thought of mercy for the 90
million or so Filipinos who can now be abused by the President – by all
presidents, for that matter – in the name of executive privilege.
The choice is between protecting the President and disclosing
the truth – China or no China – all in the name of democracy and its inherent
tenets of free expression and access to information and defending the
Constitution.
The nine jurists chose to protect the President and now
present themselves as interpreting the Constitution. The Charter has been raped
many times. In the Neri decision, the rapist even killed the victim, the
sovereign country.
