MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago on Sunday said she was inclined to excuse the husband of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from attending the Senate inquiry into the purported rigged bidding of World Bank-funded projects if he requested it for health reasons.

But Santiago, chair of the committee on economic affairs, said she was also inclined to seek a deposition from First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo so he could answer a World Bank report’s allegation of corruption against him.

The report claims that contractors and high government officials were colluding to corner World Bank-funded projects in the country.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has urged the President’s husband to break his silence.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde on Sunday asked critics of Mike Arroyo to present solid evidence.

“These are nothing until they are able to present evidence that are admissible in court,” Remonde said. “This belongs to the realm of nothing but political black propaganda.”

Being the accuser, the World Bank, through its officials, should attend the next hearing scheduled for Thursday to support the allegations, according to Sen. Joker Arroyo.

“No appearance [by the World Bank], no case,” Senator Arroyo said over dzBB radio.

Interviewed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer later, the senator likened the World Bank invocation of immunity from participating in the Senate inquiry to the executive privilege cited by the President’s Cabinet during congressional inquiries.

“In both cases, they don’t want to testify. Both are condemnable,” Senator Arroyo said, noting that the Senate was “irritated”’ by the claim of executive privilege “and yet condones the claim of immunity. Why the double standard?”

Excerpts

The committee’s guest list shows that World Bank officials are not invited to the next hearing.

Santiago’s committee is set to resume its inquiry into the World Bank blacklisting of three Filipino contractors for collusion on Feb. 12 following the release of excerpts of the World Bank report.

The report indicated that the First Gentleman, the late Sen. Robert Barbers, other politicians and public works officials were taking bribes from the contractors to ensure that they bag the projects.

Excerpts of the World Bank report were released by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who called for the resumption of the hearing.

Lacson said that excerpts of the World Bank report showed that 10 witnesses had linked Mike Arroyo to kickbacks in the bidding of construction projects.

In a statement, Jesus Santos, one of Mike Arroyo’s lawyers, called Lacson’s attacks on the President’s husband the “height of malice and abuse of parliamentary privilege.”

Santiago has issued a subpoena to the Department of Finance and the Office of the Ombudsman to release a copy of the World Bank report to the Senate.

Asked on dzBB what her committee would do should the President’s husband seek to be excused from the hearing, Santiago said she would first consult with her co-chairs—Senators Edgardo Angara and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr.—and Enrile. Angara chairs the finance committee and Revilla, the public works committee.

Santiago said whatever she and the three senators would decide would be the ruling on the matter. “But I am inclined to grant him (a request) to excuse him,” she said of the President’s husband.

Santiago said judges would normally accept a request to be excused if backed by a certification issued under oath by a doctor who would say that the appearance of the accused before the court could be life-threatening.

The President’s husband underwent a delicate open-heart surgery in 2007 and still undergoes past-operation therapy.

Representative, deposition

She also said she would be “prepared to accept the testimony” of Mike Arroyo’s representative to the hearing.

Still, she said that being a former judge, she would prefer that the First Gentleman execute a deposition before a lawyer and a stenographer from the Senate.

“Instead of us forcing him to go to the Senate, we will go to him to pose questions that we want him to answer and he would answer them,” Santiago said.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan also pushed for a deposition should Mike Arroyo be deemed medically unfit to face the Senate. But he said the Senate medical staff should perform a separate examination of the President’s husband to determine if what his doctors were saying were accurate.

Santiago acknowledged that what she had in possession was not the full World Bank report but only its decision which did not mention the alleged involvement of Ms Arroyo’s husband.

She said the World Bank first issued a notice and then came up with a referral report and then finally, a decision to the allegations against the three contractors—E.C. de Luna Construction Corp., Cavite Ideal International Construction and Development Corp. and CM Pancho Construction Inc.

“What’s important is for us to get a copy of the referral report because the World Bank doesn’t want to give it to us. That’s why I got mad because as if they don’t respect the Senate,” Santiago said.

She said this was the reason the Senate would ask Finance Secretary Margarito Teves and Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez to produce a copy because the World Bank furnished them the report as early as 2007.

Santiago said that she was not taking Gutierrez’s pronouncements that the rules in her office were preventing her from disclosing the personalities involved in the World Bank report.

Santiago reminded Gutierrez that she couldn’t use this line with the Senate as the Penal Code listed as an offense any disobedience to the subpoena of Congress.

She warned that if Gutierrez and Teves failed to submit the report, she would ask Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to direct prosecutors to file a criminal complaint against them.

Santiago said this was better than going through the longer process of citing the officials for contempt as the two would question the Senate before the Supreme Court.

Test case

“If I cannot obtain the original documents, I am allowed now to go to the secondary document,” Santiago said.

She said it would be a “good test case” if she would issue a subpoena duces tecum to the World Bank country director (Bert Hofman) himself.

The World Bank has no headquarters’ agreement with the Philippine government unlike the Asian Development Bank, according to Santiago.

Immunity

Santiago said the World Bank could be “protected” by a United Nations convention, but the institution could not use it as cover in refusing to give the Senate a copy of the report. “It has no absolute immunity,” she said.

Senator Arroyo was also inclined to believe that the World Bank had no diplomatic immunity. “The ADB has diplomatic status. I doubt the World Bank has that kind of immunity,” he said in a phone interview.

He said World Bank officials should testify before the Senate because the multilateral agency was the accuser.

The World Bank report will not amount to evidence “unless World Bank officials attest to the veracity of the charges,” he said.

Senator Arroyo underscored the importance of the World Bank supporting its claims, especially since the report implicated Barbers (now deceased) who could not defend himself from contractors who were “faceless and nameless.”

“It is not fair. You will accuse but you will not appear,” Senator Arroyo said.

He also lamented that in this controversy, the World Bank “had absolved foreign contractors in the Philippines of corruption and at the same time condemned Filipino contractors.” With a report from Christian V. Esguerra