Omerta
Reports earlier this week said President Arroyo had created not just one but two bodies to promote transparency in government. She should show that she means business by starting with the controversial $329-million broadband deal with Chinese firm ZTE Corp.The other night Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza, who had signed the deal with ZTE executives in the presence of President Arroyo in Boao, China during the campaign period last April, stonewalled when asked by congressmen to shed light on the broadband project. The deal will require public funds to repay a loan from the Chinese Export-Import Bank that will be used to finance the project. Members of the House appropriations committee who were deliberating on the proposed national budget for 2008 wanted to know the details. Their interest in the funding was valid, but Mendoza, citing the advice of his lawyer, said a restraining order from the Supreme Court on the implementation of the ZTE deal prevented him from commenting on it.
The order of the high tribunal is the latest excuse invoked by the administration for its failure to come clean on a project that will saddle Filipinos with a $329-million debt burden for the next two decades. Administration officials say the document inked in China was stolen shortly after the signing. To this day different government officials have different versions of what exactly was signed. The nation learned of the purported theft of the original document only through a slip of the tongue of one of Mendoza’s underlings.
Malacañang has maintained a stony silence amid reports linking Chairman Benjamin Abalos of the Commission on Elections to the ZTE deal. Would his involvement have anything to do with disputed election results? There is no way of knowing. Officials implicated in the deal are either threatening to sue for libel or invoking orders from the President herself preventing them from facing congressional efforts to unearth the truth. This is not transparency but the code of omerta.
