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By William B. Depasupil, Reporter
The Senate on Tuesday filed before the Supreme
Court its long-awaited motion for reconsideration on a high note,
confident that the High Tribunal would reverse its 9-6 decision
favoring the petition of Higher Education Chairman Romulo Neri, who
had invoked executive privilege in his refusal to make another
testimony before the Senate.
In their petition, the senators requested the
High Court to “take a second circumspect look at this
transcendental Neri case, schedule another oral argument if
necessary, wherein it will imperatively require the presence of the
petitioner Romulo Neri himself in the proceedings, and hold an
on-camera proceeding as this Honorable Court may deem
appropriate.”
The 104-page petition was submitted by Senators
Alan Peter Cayetano and Benigno Aquino 3rd in behalf of the three
joint committees investigating the national broadband deal
controversy.
These Senate committees are the blue-ribbon
committee, the Senate Committee on Trade and Commerce, and the
Senate Committee on National Defense and Security.
The senators were accompanied by lawyer Adel
Tamano, spokesman of the United Opposition; Makati City Mayor
Jejomar Binay; Akbayan Party-list Rep. Riza Hontiveros-Baraquel,
and hundreds of supporters.
The High Court welcomed the senators’ appeal,
saying that it was within the Senate’s prerogatives, and is in
accordance with the Rules of Court.
“The motion for reconsideration will be
calendared for deliberation by the Court en banc next Tuesday, April
15, and will be resolved in accordance with the Constitution, law,
and Rules [of Court],” the Supreme Court said in a statement.
In its petition, the Senate pointed out that the
Court’s March 25 decision has effectively rendered the Senate and
its committees inutile to inquire into actions of the President,
that it stressed are clearly relevant to issues of national concern
and necessary in crafting the much-needed legislation to address
important issues.
Citing the opinion of Justice Brandeis of the
United States Supreme Court, the senators pointed out that the three
branches of government must have that “inevitable friction” to
be able to preserve the vibrancy of a democracy and save the
citizens from autocratic rule where there are no checks and
balances.
“Unfortunately, the Neri decision, if allowed
to become final, shall be the jurisprudential springboard to unduly
destroy such inevitable friction, paving the way for autocracy in
our government,” it said.
The senators added in their petition:
“Wittingly or not, the majority opinion, with one broad stroke,
established a dangerous and crippling precedent which does not
merely gag respondents from asking petitioner the three questions on
which the instant petition is based, but has serious, far-reaching
emasculating results on future legislative inquiries such that it
may have the unintended effect of killing birds with one stone, so
to speak.”
They also described the court’s majority
ruling as “dangerous and chilling” decision, stressing that
“the Neri decision did not, by any stretch of one’s imagination,
contribute to the fight against graft and corruption.”
On the contrary, the petition said, it directly
makes the executive less transparent and weakens government
accountability, adding that the ruling will cause the lingering
impression that the High Court has lost its independence.
The petition was also all praises for the
dissenting justices, particularly Chief Justice Reynato Puno, who,
it said, wrote a “highly enlightening, if not perfect, dissenting
opinion.”
If not corrected, the senators said the High
Court’s decision would effectively turn executive privilege into a
refuge for scoundrels and a tool for a criminal cover-up.
In the same petition, the Senate also maintained
that it did not commit a grave abuse of discretion and Neri’s
claim of executive privilege did not cover matters of national
security.
“Even if it seems that the Senate is the
‘last man standing’ in a pile of institutions falling down like
dominoes, we are here to show that there remains an institution that
is prepared and ready to defend the ideals of the Constitution,”
Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. said.
“The decision must be reconsidered as it is a
debilitating blow to the very heart of the most fundamental
mechanism to have a ‘workable government’—the system of checks
and balances,” he added.
“If not corrected, the Neri decision would
have turned executive privilege into a license to commit crime. That
if we allowed it to become final, we shall have a democracy of kept
secrets, and that when secrecy is invoked amid accusation of
corruption, it is nothing but a tool for a criminal cover-up,”
Villar said, quoting the significant highlights of their new
petition’s arguments.
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