MANILA, Philippines—Former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. expects a “long-drawn battle” ahead when he testifies on the controversial $329-million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp. and needs to be in tiptop shape.
“Of course, I will testify,” the 71-year-old Pangasinan representative told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Tuesday night. His word to doubting Thomases was, “Why would I testify if I have nothing to say?”
But De Venecia was down with the flu contracted during a five-nation speaking engagement for a month that landed him in a hospital in Qatar. He returned last week.
“Right now, I’m still sick. I’m running a high fever and coughing,” he said. “If I will testify, this will be a protracted and long-drawn out battle. I need to be healthy.”
He said he would first attend to the needs of some 15,000 constituents in his district in Pangasinan province that was hit by a recent storm. He then plans to fly to the United States for a comprehensive medical checkup.
“I will definitely testify in the Senate, the House or any other forum,” De Venecia said, adding that he was getting a lot of pressure to reveal what he knows about the NBN-ZTE deal.
De Venecia said he would talk not only about the controversial golf game and lunch that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attended at the ZTE headquarters in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 2, 2006, five months before ZTE clinched the NBN contract, where he was also present.
‘I have a lot to say’
“I have a lot to say, ZTE-related and non-ZTE-related instances of corruption under the Arroyo administration,” De Venecia said. But he would not say when he would appear at the Senate hearing on the NBN.
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, chair of the blue ribbon committee, has said he would reopen the inquiry to receive De Venecia’s testimony after Iloilo Vice Gov. Rolex Suplico released photographs of Ms Arroyo playing golf in Shenzhen.
Suplico said he had a witness to Ms Arroyo’s “secret” visit to Shenzhen, where she also had a meeting with ZTE executives arranged by former Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos. De Venecia reportedly was in the President’s party that also included her husband.
Suplico said the ZTE deal was possibly sealed during lunch at the ZTE headquarters. Five months later, on April 21, 2007, Ms Arroyo witnessed the signing of the NBN-ZTE contract in China.
Once Ms Arroyo’s staunch ally, De Venecia was ousted as House Speaker in February after his son and namesake Jose “Joey” de Venecia III and other whistle-blowers implicated Abalos and the First Couple in the deal. Abalos, accused of offering multimillion-peso bribes to get endorsement of the project, later resigned.
Ms Arroyo, faced with renewed calls that she step aside, subsequently cancelled the deal to wire the nation’s bureaucracy electronically via the Internet.
Right time and place
Earlier, De Venecia said he was looking for the right time and place to talk because what he would say might cause the Arroyo administration to fall amid all the other crises besetting it.
Evangelist Bro. Eddie Villanueva, leader of the Jesus Is Lord movement, has urged De Venecia to reveal what he knows about the ZTE scandal “to show to God and the people if he is really serious in launching his moral revolution.”
For now, De Venecia only confirmed he was invited by the President to the golf game and lunch hosted by ZTE. He said he was brought there by the President probably to show to the ZTE officials that his son would no longer pursue his firm’s bid to get the NBN project.
The younger De Venecia’s firm, Amsterdam Holdings Inc., got sidelined in the previously build-operate-transfer project when the Abalos-led group entered the picture and lobbied for a government-to-government contract without benefit of a public bidding.
De Venecia’s wife Gina earlier told the Inquirer that the trip to the ZTE headquarters was so “hush-hush” that she was not even allowed to join and that she was given a vehicle to go around Shenzhen while her husband was with the President.
Not a secret trip
She said she and her husband were in Hong Kong on that All Saints’ Day holiday when Ms Arroyo, who had just ended a five-day official trip to China, invited the then Speaker to the golf game and lunch.
After Suplico’s witness came out with pictures of the First Couple on the golf course, Malacańang confirmed that the President had indeed gone to the ZTE headquarters but denied that it was a clandestine trip.
The younger De Venecia Wednesday said that his father might not be a credible witness to the NBN project but that he could talk about other government issues because he was previously close to the First Family.
“He is not privy to this issue so I don’t think he knows something I haven’t told him,” he told reporters after attending a hearing at the Office of the Ombudsman.
Joey’s testimony was part of the Senate records the Ombudsman had finally obtained in the course of its investigation of seven complaints filed in connection with the NBN deal.
The records will form part of the evidence against key personalities in the government linked to the scandal, including Abalos and former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri. With a report from Jocelyn R. Uy
