CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines--The case filed by Commission on Higher Education Chair Romulo Neri at the Supreme Court, over the executive privilege he invoked to stop the Senate from forcing him to reveal his conversations with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on the National Broadband Network-ZTE deal, would be "very important" to the country's jurisprudence, Associate Justice Adolf Azcuna said here on Saturday.

The decision on Neri's case would give "light on the extent of executive privilege," Azcuna said in a reply to a question of a participant in a forum on ethical governance at the St. Scholastica's Academy here.

"That's the issue there," he said later in an interview.

"It's a very important case because it tests the exemption versus the right of the people to information," he added.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her Cabinet officials would invoke executive privilege whenever the Senate demanded disclosures of information on several controversies rocking her administration. Executive Order No. 464, for one, invokes that privilege.

In Neri's case, the Supreme Court on Feb. 5 issued a status quo order on the Senate's arrest of Neri, a former National Economic and Development Authority director general, a few days before Rodolfo Lozada Jr. surfaced and testified on what he knew about the NBN-ZTE telecommunications deal.

Several senators pressed for the arrest and appearance of Neri, regarding him as the key in unlocking the controversy over this project.

Azcuna said the high court set the matter for oral arguments on March 4. The parties would then be asked to submit written memoranda within five days.

"There would be no arrest [of Neri] in the meantime," he said, noting that this process would have to wait until the Court would allow it.

Neri refused to say whether Arroyo asked him to proceed with the NBN project despite knowing that resigned Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. had offered him, as Neda chairman, P200 million to approve the project.

"He can if he likes but he cannot be forced [to attend the inquiry]," Azcuna said.

He said executive privilege was one of the powers of the President.

While there really is no constitutional provision that ensures it, "it's an established practice in democracy that the President is exempted from having to declare certain matters before investigations because of public interest," according to Azcuna.

The legality of executive privilege was a matter that "keeps recurring" as the legislative branch undertakes investigations.

"The Supreme Court will have to resolve [the issue]. We are interested as to what is the extent of this privilege," Azcuna said.

Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. said he believed that Neri would eventually appear in the Senate because he would have to rebut Lozada's allegations.

The Senate, through Villar, asked the Supreme Court on Feb. 15 to allow the Senate to arrest Neri.

"Petitioner repeatedly and erroneously invoked the executive privilege and by doing so, has unduly and directly interfered with, and obstructed the valid exercise of the powers and functions of herein respondent committees as senators of the Republic," Villar said in his response as Senate president to Neri's petition.