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MALACAÑANG on Thursday slammed the Senate move to issue
warrants of arrest against former socioeconomic planning
Secretary Romulo Neri and Philippine Forest Corp. chief
Roberto Lozada, who snubbed Wednesday’s hearing into the
national broadband network program controversy involving
Chinese telecoms giant ZTE.
Press
Secretary Ignacio Bunye said in a statement the move is
“clearly not in aid of legislation, but in aid of
politics-as-usual.”
“We
deplore the continued moves of the Senate in issuing
warrants of arrest against executive officials. . . .
Hearings on a contract that has long been cancelled,
with witnesses who have said all they have to say [to]
distract the nation from its urgent business and disturb
the momentum for growth and social reforms,” Bunye said.
This, as
Sen. Panfilo Lacson filed a tough bill encouraging
whistleblowers and penalizing those who try to stop them
from testifying, in apparent frustration over the
Executive’s move to use the President’s order barring
officials from testifying in Congress without explicit
clearance from Malacañang.
Senate
Majority Leader and Independent Sen. Kiko Pangilinan
Thursday urged his fellow senators to reject Neri’s
request for reconsideration regarding the arrest order
issued by the Senate blue-ribbon Committee for him to
testify on the shelved and allegedly overpriced
$329-million ZTE-NBN project.
“His
request for reconsideration should be denied outright.
It would be better for him to prepare to answer our
questions instead of attempting to further delay the
proceedings with this request. This is bad advice from
his lawyers because it only serves to test the patience
of the senators who have bent over backwards way too
much in his case,” Pangilinan said.
Neri had
refused to testify on facts about the NBN-ZTE deal which
he obtained from his conversations with PGMA, citing
executive privilege, a power of the President to
withhold information that could affect diplomatic
relations and matters of national security.
According to Bunye, however, until now, the Senate has
not given any indication of the legislation it intends
to craft from the hearings, “at the expense of the
privacy, dignity and rights of Cabinet secretaries and
government functionaries.”
On
Thursday Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez urged the
Supreme Court to resolve Neri’s petition filed last
month seeking to declare null and void the show-cause
order earlier issued by the Senate for his failure to
appear before another hearing scheduled on November 20,
2007.
The
Justice secretary said the Court should act on Neri’s
petition as soon as possible, as the situation could
result in a constitutional crisis if it goes beyond
control.
“If the
quarrel between the Senate and the Executive goes out of
control, and [disrupts] the workings of government, with
more reason that I think that the SC should now act on
Neri’s petition so that everybody will be guided
accordingly. This is something that we can consider as a
singular situation; this can lay down parameters what
one can do and cannot do,” he added.
In his
petition before the SC last month, Neri sought a
temporary restraining order (TRO) and/or writ of
preliminary injunction to enjoin respondents—Senate
Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and
Investigations (blue ribbon committee, Senate Committee
on Trade and Commerce and Senate Committee on National
Defense and Security—from citing him in contempt and
sanctioning him. Neri insisted that he properly invoked
executive privilege to justify his nonappearance at the
November 20, 2007, hearing and all further hearings on
the same subject.
At the
Senate hearing on the NBN deal on September 26, 2007,
Neri disclosed that former Comelec chairman Benjamin
Abalos offered him P200 million in exchange for his
office approval of the project.
He also
said he told President Arroyo of the bribe attempt and
that she instructed him not to accept the bribe offer,
but to endorse the project just the same.
Neri,
however, invoked executive privilege when the committee
members asked him to divulge what he and the President
discussed thereafter on the NBN project.
Neri, as
chairman of the Commission on Higher Education, skipped
the First Biennial National Congress on Education
Thursday. Organizers were unable to explain his absence,
and it was widely speculated it was linked directly to
his effort to avoid being arrested on account of the
Senate order.
Meanwhile, Lacson’s Bill 2040 was filed shortly after
Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr., citing threats to him and his
family, also snubbed the Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Lozada’s
official excuse was that he flew abroad for a conference
in connection with his work as chief of the Philippine
Forest Corp., but businessman Joey de Venecia III told
national TV that Lozada expressed fears for his safety
and his family’s after receiving threats.
“It is
high time we encourage whistle blowers to expose
corruption through this bill. This may well be a
challenge to Malacañang as well. If it is as serious in
fighting corruption as it claims to be, it should
certify the bill as urgent,” Lacson said. |
