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President Arroyo should quickly revoke EO 464. It
doesn’t do her any good. It only makes her look as if she is using
it to suppress the truth.
She issued EO 464 in Sept. 26,
2005, to ban her Cabinet officials and military and police
commanders from appearing at congressional hearings without her
expressed permission. She justified her order, invoking the
separation of powers and the constitutional provision granting
executive privilege to the Chief Executive. She also cited the
“need to prevent such [congressional] inquiries in aid of
legislation from being used for partisan political purposes.”
EO 464 was clearly a move to
arrest the demonization of her administration in Senate hearings.
These were probing, as they do now, alleged massive corruption
attending various government projects. But the most spectacular
Senate hearing in 2005 was about the “Hello Garci” tapes.
She issued EO 464 when two Marine
officers, Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, at the time the Philippine
Military Academy’s assistant superintendent, and Col. Alexander
Balutan, then assistant commandant of PMA cadets, were about to
testify in the Senate. Their testimonies were to be about their
personal knowledge of how the military was reportedly used to commit
election fraud in the 2004 election.
Gen. Gudani and Col. Balutan
defied EO 464. At the Senate armed forces committee hearing,
the Marine general spoke of learning from cadets and his men about
the administration party’s electoral fraud. Gudani and Balutan
were immediately relieved of their PMA jobs, placed in detention and
court-martialed.
They were charged with disobeying
the Armed Forces Chief’s command not to attend the Senate hearing.
The treatment of Gudani and
Balutan was resented by many military men and the public. It has
undoubtedly contributed to the restiveness in the ranks of the
military.
Much of the public, like the CBCP,
generally sees EO 464 as the President’s instrument for allegedly
“suppressing the truth” about the Garci tapes and corruption
scandals.
April 2006 decision
Ironically, EO 464—if we are to
respect the opinions of Sen. Joker Arroyo and retired Chief Justice
Artemio Panganiban—was made virtually useless to the Palace by the
Supreme Court on April 20, 2006. That was when the Court voted to
void Sections 2(b) and 3 of the order, which required public
officials, including AFP and PNP officers, to get the President’s
permission to attend congressional hearings. But the High Court
retained the President’s right to ban executive officials from
appearing in the Question Hour to be grilled by lawmakers on the way
they are carrying out our laws.
The Supremes ruled that
Congress could require officials to attend its hearings “in aid of
legislation” but can only request executive officials to be
present at the Question Hour.
Former CJ Panganiban was
deeply involved in these rulings made to resolve the Senate’s
challenge to the constitutionality of EO 464. Sen. Arroyo
represented the Senate in the suit.
In other words, the Palace
cannot use EO 464 as a blanket prohibition on Cabinet members and
other officials, including military and police officers, from
appearing in congressional hearings.
Ex-Chief Justice Panganiban
and Sen. Arroyo have said, in effect, that there is nothing for
Malacañang’s legal team to study about revoking EO 464 because
the Supreme Court decision on the Senate’s challenge is clear and
correct.
“It has laid down the
parameters of what the Congress can do and cannot do, and what the
Executive can and cannot do in respect to congressional
investigations. In short, it has defined the delicate balance
between the executive and the legislature in this area,” Sen.
Arroyo said. In an earlier and separate discussion with
members of media, former CJ Panganiban expressed the same thought.
Transparency and disclosure
The former CJ has told reporters
that when officials refuse to go to congressional hearings they no
longer invoke EO 464, but executive privilege, which is in the
Constitution. After the Supreme Court struck down parts of EO 464,
nothing was left in it that allows an executive to refuse a
congressional summons to a hearing.
But in the executive
department’s use of executive privilege, the dominant rule to
apply is transparency and disclosure. The Palace or Cabinet
secretaries who wish to be excused from a Senate or House summons
have to show cause. If national security or public interest is at
stake, then their appearance can be done in an executive (or closed
door) session.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno
has said that the High Court will soon issue parameter guidelines to
help clarify these matters. He said the SC will issue these
guidelines in the course of resolving the petition filed by
Secretary Romulo Neri, the Senate’s original witness in the ZTE
NBN deal, to quash a Senate order for his arrest.
President Arroyo will earn
a lot of goodwill from the Catholic bishops if she revokes her EO
464. She loses nothing since the order doesn’t legally give
her the power to prevent officials from answering questions that do
not involve national security and sensitive diplomatic matters.
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