At the final hearing of the Supreme Court on the MOA-AD, Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera said, "The panel conveyed to me that the MOA was not submitted to the Office of the President. She never saw it, she was never shown a copy."

After the hearing, we reminded Devanadera that Arroyo talked about the MOA-AD in her state-of-the nation address, a week before the scheduled signing in Kuala Lumpur. These were Arroyo’s words: " A comprehensive peace has eluded us for half a century. But last night, differences on the tough issue of ancestral domain were resolved. Yes, there are political dynamics among the people of Mindanao. Let us sort them out with the utmost sobriety, patience and restraint. I ask Congress to act on the legislative and political reforms that will lead to a just and lasting peace during our term of office."

Devanadera said Arroyo was just given a general outline of the agreement.

The decision not sign the MOA-AD "in its present form" was made only last week. Even after a petition was filed by former Senate President Frank Drilon, Senator Mar Roxas and Atty. Adel Tamano, spokesman of the United Opposition to declare the agreement unconstitutional, Malacañang officials have been defending it as not violative of the Constitution. Didn’t Gloria Arroyo bother to read the controversial document?

Drilon said if Arroyo had indeed read the MOA, she could be impeached because under the Constitution, the president "shall ensure that the laws be faithfully executed."

In the first hearing, commenting on the lengthy enumeration of the lawyer Lourdes Sereno, counsel of Drilon and Tamano, of the provisions in the MOA-AD that are violative of the Constitution, Chief Justice Reynato Puno suggested in jest that to save time she should just have enumerated provisions that were not violated.

As in the first two hearings, Justice Antonio Carpio was incisive and unrelenting. He interrogated Jeffrey Candelaria, chief legal consultant of the Philippine panel in the peace talks with the MILF, about the provision "without derogating from the requirements of prior agreements" related to the plebiscite and the changing of the Constitution to accommodate the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.

Carpio was able to elicit from Candelaria the information that the phrase refers to six agreements signed by the heads of both panels in the peace talks.

Carpio asked: What is so sacred with these agreements that they should be outside the purview of the Constitution?

Candelaria’s answer was neither here nor there.

"Does the President have the authority to commit to the MILF that these provisions would be exempted from the coverage of the Constitution?"

Candelaria said, "The President is not the one signing the agreement."

Carpio hammered on: "So, the President is delegating the authority to sign so that she will not be held accountable to the violation of the Constitution?"

Very GMA.