Neri defiant, no-show at High Court

March 4, 2008

Romulo Neri was a no-show Tuesday at scheduled oral arguments before the Supreme Court on his petition that he can invoke “executive privilege” in refusing to testify in congressional investigations.

A former Socioeconomic Planning secretary, Neri earlier invoked executive privilege to prevent the Senate from compelling him to divulge his conversation with President Gloria Arroyo on athe aborted $330-million national broadband network deal with China’s ZTE Corp.

Now acting chairman of the Commission on Higher Education, he was represented by his lawyer Antonio Bautista, who raised before the High Court en banc the issue of military and diplomatic concerns as reasons why his client resorted to invoking executive privilege to skip Senate hearings on the broadband deal.

Bautista, in his argument, said Neri has all the right to invoke executive privilege because the national broadband deal was an agreement between the governments of the Philippines and China.

But Justice Antonio Carpio slammed Bautista’s contention, saying the broadband deal was a “commercial contract” and there was nothing secret about it.

“This is a commercial contract. Where are the secrets there?” Carpio asked Neri’s lawyer. “You have not established any military connections. How can we conclude that it [Neri testifying before the Senate] will prejudice military secrets?”

Pressed by Carpio, Bautista later backtracked, saying his contention was only a concern that the broadband deal involved military and diplomatic secrets.

Carpio pointed out that executive privilege could not be used to cover up crimes, such as bribery.

Bautista agreed but insisted that there was no bribery involved in the deal.

The Supreme Court said it would resolve the Neri petition in five to 10 days.

Sen. Benigno Aquino 3rd told reporters that Bautista’s argument was typical of a lawyer defending his client by all means.

Aquino raised the issue of how Bautista became Neri’s legal counsel. In an earlier testimony before the Senate, he said, Bautista admitted that he and Neri have no lawyer-client contract or a retainer agreement.

The senator said if there really was nothing wrong with the broadband deal, as claimed by the government of President Gloria Arroyo, Malacañang would not block the investigation and present all the documents on the deal for scrutiny.

“If they have nothing to hide, [they have to] present all the [pieces of] evidence to prove it [broadband deal] was clean. But they are blocking it, which only fired up the people to search for the truth,” Aquino added.

Neri had told the Senate that he was offered a bribe of P200 million by former Chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. of the Commission on Elections in exchange for his endorsement of the broadband deal.

He said he had informed President Arroyo about the Abalos offer but refused to divulge his entire conversation with the Chief Executive and invoked executive privilege.

The Senate issued an arrest warrant against Neri for his refusal to appear in the Senate hearings. Neri then filed a petition before the Supreme Court questioning the arrest order.

The High Court en banc issued a status-quo order on Neri’s petition, effectively stopping his arrest until it resolves the petition in oral arguments.

Malacañang said it hopes that the Senate will abide by whatever decision the Supreme Court will hand down on the petition of Neri.

“Considering the urgency of the question on executive privilege as filed by Secretary Romulo Neri and the clarificatory petition filed by Senators Aquino and [Manuel] “Mar” Roxas 2nd, we are constrained to await the result of the oral arguments in the Supreme Court while the government has pledged to abide by the [High Court’s] decision,” Deputy Press Secretary Lorelie Fajardo said.

“We hope that the Senate shall commit to abide by [the Supreme Court’s] decision. As regard the deadline, we would appeal to former Cabinet men to give the [High Court] time to settle once and for all [the Neri petition],” Fajardo added.
–With Angelo S. Samonte