PHILIPPINES: NO REASON TO STOP SENATE PROBE OF BROADBAND DEAL DESPITE ENTRY OF OMBUDSMAN

Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban)
today told Malacañang and its legislative lackeys to
stop telling the Senate to discontinue its
investigation into the national broadband controversy
and to entrust this task instead to the Office of the
Ombudsman which has already started its probe on the
same case.

Pimentel said there is no reason to scuttle the Senate
inquiry into the alleged anomalies surrounding the
$329 million ZTE-NBN contract which constitute public,
and not private crime, committed by people in
government, and is therefore a matter of public
interest.

“Let us not allow the Senate to be diverted from its
investigative function just because another government
agency is opening up an investigation into the same
subject matter,” he said.

“My suggestion is we go full steam forward and damn
the torpedoes.”

Ironically, Pimentel said that while the Senate is
being dissuaded from pursuing its investigation, the
Department of Justice has moved to conduct its own
inquiry of the ZTE-NBN with the approval of President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“We are not preventing them from doing that. We are
not bound by what other agencies are doing. For all we
know, these agencies might be manipulated by forces
beyond the control of the Senate,” he said.

The senator from Mindanao expressed dismay that the
Ombudsman sat on four complaints involving the ZTE-NBN
deal filed by different personalities for more than
five months and began to act on them only now after an
administration official, Rodolfo Lozada, Jr., gave
testimonies that are very damaging to the Arroyo
administration.

He challenged the Ombudsman to conduct an impartial
and no-nonsense investigation into the
telecommunications deal and to erase the impression
that it is beholden to the Palace.

“The Ombudsman has every right to investigate the
matter and come out with its findings. The merits of
the findings of the Ombudsman would depend on their
rationality and impartiality,” the opposition leader
said.