“I have my reservations over the compromise proposal. In my view, the role of the Supreme Court is to say what the law is. But if they are now proposing a compromise, that is a different matter,” Senator Pimentel said.

Based on the compromise, Secretary Neri should no longer be asked three questions that were earlier raised by the senators but he refused to answer by invoking executive privilege.

These questions were: Whether President Arroyo approved the NBN-ZTE project in spite of the bribery disclosure, whether she had dictated on Mr. Neri to approve the project, and whether the President had followed up on her directive.

Senator Pimentel stressed that the people expect the Supreme Court to discharge its role as arbiter of conflicts between the executive and legislative to avoid a constitutional crisis.

He said there is still a lot of questions on the NBN-ZTE that remains unanswered by Mr. Neri, the former Director General of the National Economic and Development Authority, and now Chairman of Commission on Higher Education.

For instance, Senator Pimentel said Secretary Neri should reveal what the President told him after he expressed his objections to the proposal to fund the National Broadband project through Chinese loans instead of being implemented through the build-operate-transfer scheme. # # #