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This deal involves P16 billion and the documents
suddenly disappear in thin air? Is this not outrageous?
—Senate President Manuel Villar Jr.
Now that the facts on the ZTE deal are slowly being
uncovered, it is now time for the Senate to review all
agreements executed by the administration of Arroyo with
the Chinese government.
—Sen.
Consuelo Madrigal, in a statement
What was
once the object of speculation in the last few months
has now come into the open: that the forging of the
controversial and potentially corrupt deal on the
national broadband network (NBN) with Chinese firm ZTE
Corp.—based on the Senate testimony of Joey de Venecia—involved
no less than the husband of the President of the
Republic, as well as the equally controversial
Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Benjamin
Abalos.
All
these new information highlights the need for us to dig
deeper into the issue and see to it that everybody who
was responsible in the surreptitious deal will be held
accountable. It’s high time that the Senate, and
eventually the courts of law, should go heavy on this so
that eventually the culprits are punished.
The
Sandiganbayan has just convicted former President Joseph
Estrada of plunder a week ago. By the looks of it, these
deals—the NBN and the cyber education project (CEP),
amounting to $800 million to be shouldered by taxpayers
in the next 20 years—smells no less than another plunder
of monstrous proportions.
If we
have jailed a big fish like Erap, we may have to
eventually jail bigger crocodiles and whales to show the
world and ourselves that we are serious about justice
and fairness.
The
Senate, of course, has just started its inquiry. There
are so many things that need to be corroborated before
conclusions could be made. We have yet to hear from no
less than the First Gentleman himself as well as other
names (Comelec Chairman Abalos, former National Economic
and Development Authority [Neda] director general Romulo
Neri, Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza, Trade
Secretary Peter Favila, and many others) mentioned by
the younger de Venecia.
But by
just the sheer stink of it, there is just too much smoke
and rotten stuff in these deals to deny anomaly.
One
couldn’t help but be suspicious because government
officials, from the very start, moved heaven and earth
just to keep the deals hidden from the public. The way
the officials from the Department of Transportation and
Communications (DOTC) and Neda handled the process of
choosing the supplier and financier for the deals seems
to highlight the fact that these bureaucrats have all
along been pursuing, not the public, but some private,
interests.
We
suspect private motives because the two deals seemed to
have bypassed all the procedures necessary to ensure
transparency.
The
pursuit of public interest suggests that the costs of
such deals should be kept to the minimum, preferably
tested by the market either through bidding or the Swiss
challenge.
In
truth, the government never entertained potential
bidders for a possible build-operate-transfer (BOT)
arrangement. Government officials are saying that they
rejected Amsterdam Holdings Inc. (AHI), Joey de
Venecia’s company, for incomplete documentation, but
they never tried attracting bids from potential
providers.
Having
ignored AHI for a possible BOT arrangement, the
government could have considered entertaining other
possible suppliers besides ZTE, like the American-owned
Arescom, in an open and transparent process. After
choosing ZTE, the government should have opened it to
the Swiss challenge. But nothing of this sort occurred.
In fact
the government came all the way to accommodate the
Chinese government, even to the point of agreeing to the
spinning off of the cyber education component from the
original NBN proposal for an additional $500-million
loan from the Chinese Eximbank. The contract was signed
despite the recommendations of the technical working
group that the government should just have a single
backbone and that the satellite-based CEP isn’t
cost-effective.
From a
project that should only cost within the range of $139
million to $260 million, the CEP and NBN deals ballooned
to more than $800 million. These are huge amounts
taxpayers are going to pay in the next 20 years, and we
haven’t even seen the contracts or know whether or not
some big shots have sold our souls to the devil.
And
after signing the deal—no less attended by the
President—the contract disappeared into thin air. And
now that the Senate has started investigating, in aid of
legislation, government officials are trying to evade
scrutiny by citing all sorts of excuses, like sub judice
and a gag order by Malacañang, to prevent officials from
attending congressional inquiries.
After
the contract was found to have been lost months ago,
DOTC officials said they are in the process of
reconstructing it. How long would it take to reconstruct
a contract? Until now the government could not even
produce a copy for the Senate and the public, not even
after the Justice department had issued an opinion
saying that the contract, after all, is valid and
binding. On what basis did the secretary of justice base
his judgment that the ZTE deal is clean?
All
these actions by the government, according to Sen.
Aquilino Pimentel Jr., seem to indicate a massive
cover-up. Of course, we will never know the extent of
the possible cover- up and corruption unless the Senate
digs deeper into this mess.
Malacañang, so far, has been doing its best to prevent
Secretaries Mendoza, Neri and Favila from appearing at
the Senate. The people would surely not accept this
intransigence. The Senate, therefore, should exhaust all
its powers to compel these “public servants” to answer
the senators’—as well as the people’s—questions.
There is
so much at stake in this matter. It’s no less than our
soul and our birthright. |
