Stickup
ON THE SAME DAY THE SANDIGANBAYAN ended the trial of the century by sentencing her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, to life in prison for plunder, President Macapagal-Arroyo announced the creation of a new body to help curb graft and corruption in government. The President told the Bishops-Ulama Conference in Malacañang Wednesday that she had created the Procurement Transparency Group to monitor procurement for public projects. The inter-agency body, chaired by the Department of Budget and Management, will have representatives from civil society. It will monitor procurement biddings and report anomalies to agency heads as well as the Office of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit. Its main purpose is “to ensure transparency and good governance in our massive public investments,’’ Ms Arroyo said. A separate group will “also harness civil society and the private sector in ensuring that public works projects serve the needs and objectives for which they are undertaken, and contract terms and timetables are complied with.’’If the twin announcements were meant to signal a fresh resolve to combat graft in government, the President herself diluted the message with her other statements in the same forum. “We must be a government that honors contracts and agreements that go through the required processes, despite media attacks,’’ she said. “We live by the rule of law.’’ Later when asked by reporters if that policy included the ZTE contract to set up a national broadband network (NBN), Ms Arroyo reiterated that “as long as the contract goes through the required processes, we are required to comply’’ with its terms.
It was clear as day that she was referring to the $329-million contract with the Chinese firm ZTE. No other contract, whether involving foreign or local governments or companies, has been the subject of so much “media attacks’’ in recent months. And “transparent’’ is the last thing anyone can say about that contract or the processes that went before and after it was signed -- from the deliberations on the project to the negotiations and the decision to award it to ZTE.
To this day, top administration officials continue to dissemble and mislead the public about the NBN project and how ZTE bagged the contract. They cannot even agree if there is a contract or not. Some Cabinet officials say what has been signed is a memorandum of agreement or understanding, but others call it a contract. Commission on Higher Education Chair Romulo Neri, who used to head the National Economic and Development Authority, says there is a “supplier’s contract’’ but it is only a “prospective contract.’’ If that means it is not the real thing, then why did Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza sign it? And why did the President have to leave her husband, who had just undergone a delicate operation, to witness the signing in Boao, China? If the contract is “prospective,” it is probably because the plans and specifications are not spelled out so that no one can tell exactly what the country is getting for $329 million or if that would be the final price.
When pressed for answers, most Cabinet members point to Mendoza, saying the NBN is his baby and he knows it best. But Mendoza refuses to make the contract public and he doesn’t want to talk -- not to the press, not to the members of Congress. The only talking he has done recently was to the Cabinet where he supposedly explained the project in detail, including how it would save the government billions of pesos a year.
Funny that Mendoza bothered to do that. It was like preaching to the converted or at least to those who must act like true believers, given the President’s keen interest in seeing the NBN project through. But it is not the Cabinet that has been asking questions, it is the Filipino public. Does Mendoza think he owes it to the Cabinet to explain, but not to the Filipino people?
The Arroyo administration wants the Filipino people to approve a contract and pay for a project they know very little about, and it has the temerity to talk about transparency and good governance? In any other place, they would call this secret, rotten deal a stinking stickup.
