Roxas predicts loss in SC battle over exec privilege, earns colleagues' ire

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate's motion for reconsideration that will be filed before the Supreme Court Tuesday regarding its ruling on the coverage of the executive privilege is destined for defeat, Sen. Manuel Roxas II predicted Monday. According to Roxas, it is unlikely that the high court would reverse itself in its earlier ruling favoring the petition of former Socio-economic secretary Romulo Neri regarding the Senate hearings on the $329-million ZTE broadband controversy. “I don’t think they (SC) will change their decision," Roxas said. Instead of pushing for the motion for reconsideration, Roxas said the Senate leadership should just accept the high court’s compromise offer, which would allow Neri to appear in the Senate tri-panel committee probing the anomalous NBN-ZTE deal. Roxas, as head of the Senate Committee on Trade and Commerce, co-chairs the Senate tri-panel investigating the ZTE broadband deal. Senate lawyers, along with some senators from the opposition bloc, are set to go the SC office Tuesday morning to submit its motion for reconsideration regarding SC’s controversial decision upholding executive privilege Roxas’ forecast, however, did not sit well with some of his colleagues. Opposition Senator Panfilo Lacson, for one, accused Roxas of being a “defeatist" who seemed to have given up the search for the truth on the NBN-ZTE deal. “If we follow Mar’s line of thinking, giving up is the only option left to the Senate and the truth," Lacson said. “A defeatist attitude will bring us nowhere. It only takes two justices to be enlightened to reverse the ruling on Neri’s petition," he added. Sen. Francis Escudero, another senator from the opposition bloc, avoided reacting directly on Roxas’s "fearless forecast," but stressed that as a lawyer, he "can’t and won’t pre-judge the case." - GMANews.TV