n ruling in favor
of Romulo Neri’s claim to executive privilege, the Supreme Court said: "This
privilege is said to be necessary to guarantee the candor of presidential
advisors and to provide ‘the President and those who assist him... with freedom
to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions
and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express except privately.’"
Why the Supreme Court found it necessary to qualify the
passage with the cop-out "it is said" puzzles us. The structure of that
paragraph clearly shows the Supreme Court was citing somebody else. That is
signalled by the opening quotation marks bracketing the passage "the President
and those who assist him…"
The Supreme Court could have simply said "This privilege is
necessary to guarantee…" and that would have served as an unambiguous
declaration that executive privilege is necessary to ensure candor in
discussions in the highest councils of state.
But had the Supreme Court said so, it would have stated a
patent falsehood in this specific case involving Neri’s conversations with
Gloria Arroyo covering the graft-tainted $329 million national broadband network
deal.
The Supreme Court, of which a good number of members were
former Cabinet secretaries, would also have laid down a doctrine based on a
wrong appreciation of the dynamics in the Executive department.
Let’s take the latter case first. Cabinet secretaries are
alter egos of the chief executive. They have no business listening to the
hooting throng as to how to advise their principal, unless, of course, they are
in the Cabinet on false pretenses as in truth they intend later to run for
elective positions.
Moreover, it is the President’s own lookout if he or she
tapped the timid or scared for her official family.
And for the clincher, the problem of being less than candid
in Cabinet deliberations stems not from fear of what the public might say but
from fear of offending a principal who does not want to hear the unvarnished
truth. The adviser might be summarily fired for saying the emperor has no
clothes.
That is precisely what apparently happened to Neri. The
policy of his department, the NEDA, was to undertake the NBN project under a
build-operate-transfer arrangement. That was also the personal stand of Neri.
However, he was instructed by Gloria Arroyo to approve the change in the project
into a direct government undertaking.
Neri probably simply did not have the balls to stand up to
Gloria. That’s neither here nor there. The point is there was no danger to him
whatsoever from public lynching had he stuck to his guns. But he certainly would
have lost his job had he not obeyed Gloria’s directive. In fact, he indeed lost
his job as planning secretary for not giving in fast enough to the wishes of
former election chair Benjamin Abalos despite a P200 million bribe offer. He was
shoved aside to the Commission on Higher Education.
The Supreme Court is wrong and is inflicting a terrible wrong on justice and
good governance in upholding the Executive’s claim of privilege to hide the
truth behind the NBN-ZTE deal.
