SC to decide on Neri's petition before April

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court will rule on the petition of Commission on Higher Education chairman Romulo Neri before the end of the month. Court spokesman lawyer Jose Midas Marquez said Tuesday that Chief Justice Reynato Puno has ordered during the en banc session that Neri’s petition be decided upon before the High Court starts its summer sessions in Baguio City on April 1. Marquez said that newly-installed justice Arturo Brion, who completed the line-up of judges, had already participated in Tuesday’s deliberation on the Neri case. Brion had earlier said he sees no reason why he should not participate in the Neri case, saying that he will rule on it as fairly as he could. Neri's petition sought the SC's ruling that would set the parameters in the invocation of executive privilege in the light of the communications between him and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on the controversial ZTE broadband deal. Neri, who filed the suit in his capacity as former director of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), claimed that the three questions posed to him during his first and only Senate appearance last year were privileged communications covered by the principle of executive privilege and which can only be divulged during an executive session. The three questions are whether the President followed up the NBN-ZTE project with Neri; whether he was told by the President to prioritize the NBN-ZTE project; and whether the President told him to go ahead with the project after learning of the massive bribe offer. His invocation of executive privilege on these questions has prompted the Senators to cite him for contempt. The Senate also issued an arrest warrant against Neri for his refusal to attend Senate hearings on the ZTE deal. At the end of the oral arguments last March 4, SC magistrates proposed a compromise wherein Neri will again attend the Senate hearings and testify on the ZTE bribery scandal, provided that the Senators will respect his invocation of executive privilege on three questions. The proposal was made so that the Senate can exhaust all questions with regard to the NBN-ZTE controversy and those questions that Neri would refuse to answer on the ground of executive privilege would have to be set aside and be brought back to the Supreme Court through a supplemental petition for determination whether the executive privilege were validly invoked. Should the parties agree to the compromise, the arrest warrant and citation for contempt on Neri would then be lifted, and the Senate would continue with its interrogation of the Cabinet official. Neri, however, will still have a right to invoke executive privilege for certain questions and if he does, all these will be gathered and later elevated again via a supplemental petition to the Court if the Senate determines that he could not invoke the privilege. The senators, however, junked the compromise and said that they will just wait for the Court to issue its ruling on the petition based on the arguments of the two parties. - GMANews.TV