Senate set to abandon bid to inhibit 3 justices

BY DENNIS GADIL

THE Senate is poised to abandon the filing of a petition for inhibition of Supreme Court Associate Justices Arturo Brion, Presbitero Velasco and Renato Corona on the issue of executive privilege for lack of signatures.

"It’s dead in the water," a ranking Senate source said.

Sen. Richard Gordon, in a media forum, yesterday reminded his colleagues that the SC is not a lower court whose members could be asked anytime to inhibit themselves.

Gordon was among the senator-lawyers who did not sign the petition which was the brainchild of majority leader Francis Pangilinan.

Gordon said SC justices always enjoy the presumption of impartiality.

"It is a constitutional body... there is no reason for them to be beholden to anybody because they are a co-equal branch of government," he said.

Senate sources have said at least nine senators signed the petition, including Panfilo Lacson, Jamby Madrigal, Mar Roxas, Pia Cayetano, Alan Peter Cayetano, Jinggoy Estrada and Pangilinan.

The petition needed 13 signatures to make it a majority action by the Senate.

The pro-inhibit bloc lost one supporter in Alan Peter Cayetano after his office clarified that what he signed was the draft of the petition.

Lacson appeared to have also lost interest, not returning queries if the petition for inhibition would be filed at all.

Minority leader Aquilino Pimentel has also distanced himself from the petition.

Pangilinan also failed to clinch the support of Senate President Manuel Villar.

Villar and Pimentel left for the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting in South Africa without signing the petition.

A Senate source said Villar and Pimentel had strong reservations about the petition as it might antagonize the high court as a whole and adversely affect their motion for reconsideration which they filed Tuesday.

The high court, by a vote of 9-6, last March 25 upheld the decision of former Planning Secretary Romulo Neri last September to invoke executive privilege after senators asked him questions about his conversations with President Arroyo on the cancelled $329 million broadband project with China’s ZTE Corp.

Pangilinan said three justices should inhibit themselves because "Brion voted in favor of Neri, even if he was not yet part of the Supreme Court when the case was heard while Corona’s wife is said to be a presidential appointee and Velasco, on the one hand, is reported to have played golf with Neri."

Pangilinan said the three justices’ perceived closeness to Malacañang puts to question their credibility and impartiality in cases concerning the government, particularly in the NBN-ZTE contract.

First:	Acts 11:19-26
Resp:	Psalm 87:1-7
Gospel:	John 10:22-30