CA allows Ermita to skip Magdalo coup hearings
The Court of Appeals has barred a Makati court from compelling Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita to testify in the coup d'etat case of the more than 30 soldiers implicated in the July 2003 Oakwood Mutiny. In a 28-page decision, the CA’s Special Seventeenth Division quashed the subpoena duces tecum ad testificandum issued against Ermita by Judge Oscar Pimentel of Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 148 last April 14, 2009. The CA held that the soldiers’ real motive in seizing Oakwood cannot be established through Ermita’s testimony. “Whatever information that may be elicited from the latter will not prove the private respondents’ real motive, for motive is intrinsic in nature, a state of mind which we cannot simply probe into as it is hidden in one’s conscience," the CA said in the ruling that was penned by Associate Justice Normandie B. Pizarro. The soldiers - collectively known as the Magdalo group - wanted Ermita, who presidential adviser on the peace process at the time of the mutiny, to testify on the atrocities in Mindanao and the alleged irregularities in the government and the military. The soldiers cited the Mindanao atrocities and government corruption as reasons why they stormed Oakwood Premier Hotel in Makati City in July 27, 2003 and demanded the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and several other government officials. Ermita has refused to appear before the court, saying that information sought to be elicited form him involve military and security concerns that call for state secrecy and are covered by executive privilege rule. The CA stressed that under Section 24, Rule 130 of the Revised Rules of Court or the rule on privileged communication, a public officer cannot be compelled to testify on matters of communications made to him in official confidence if public interest would suffer from such disclosure. - KBK, GMANews.TV