MANILA, Philippines -- Malacañang is holding backchannel talks with the Senate, which had ordered the arrest of two government executives who failed to appear before an investigation into bribery allegations surrounding the botched national broadband network (NBN) project, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s lawyer said Thursday.
"Meron [There is]," said Chief Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol when asked about the Palace response to the warrants issued by the Senate against Romulo Neri, former socio-economic planning secretary, and Rodolfo Lozada Jr., whom Neri had designated consultant for the NBN project.
"We knew that only Senators [Alan Peter] Cayetano and [Rodolfo] Biazon were behind it. The other senators don't share the same stand," Apostol told reporters.
Cayetano and Biazon are chairmen of two of the three committees investigating the $329 million telecommunications agreement signed by the government with China’s ZTE Corp., which the President eventually cancelled.
On Wednesday, the Senate issued arrest warrants for Neri and Lozada for ignoring the subpoenas to appear in the hearing at the upper House on the same day.
Apostol said Neri, now chairman of the Commission on Higher
Education, would file an appeal before the Senate to recall the arrest order. Lozada is abroad, Apostol said.
In his testimony before the Senate late last year, Neri said former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Benjamin Abalos tried to bribe him to favor the bid of ZTE Corp. for the NBN project.
But Neri declined to discuss his conversation with the President about the NBN project, citing executive privilege.
Businessman Jose de Venecia III, son of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., also claimed that Abalos tried to bribe him, so that his company, Amsterdam Holdings, would give up its bid for the broadband project.
The controversy forced Abalos to resign and prompted Arroyo to scrap the ZTE deal.
"It's finished. The ZTE deal has been rescinded. So what more? The
Senate does not respect us. They have no respect for Malacañang,"
Apostol said.
