Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita has asked the Makati Regional Trial Court to junk the Magdalo group?s bid to make him testify in today?s hearing of the coup d?etat case against the junior military officers who staged the 2003 Oakwood mutiny.

In an urgent motion, Ermita told Judge Oscar Pimentel that taking the witness stand was irrelevant to the case.

?It taxes the imagination on how the Executive Secretary?s testimony could have the remotest bearing to any one of the elements of the crime of coup d?etat. In all probability, the testimony being sought would just be a waste of precious time and resources of the Honorable Court and of the Executive Secretary as well,? said Ermita.

Pimentel had ordered Ermita and Press Secretary Jesus Dureza to appear in court, based on the Magdalo petition, requiring them to testify on events in Mindanao that prompted the rebel soldiers to seize the Oakwood Hotel Premiere on July 27, 2003.

Ernesto Francisco Jr., Magdalo counsel, claimed the existence of ?Operation Greenbase? allegedly taken up in a meeting of the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security that ordered a military offensive.

?They [Dureza and Ermita] have full knowledge of the February 2003 bloody offensive in Buliok Complex in the municipality of Pikit, North Cotabato, a former stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which the government allegedly wanted to clear for an oil exploration project,? he said.

Francisco said the testimonies would indicate that his clients were not out to overthrow the Arroyo administration but merely to express their grievance. Ferdinand Fabella