Philippines: Arroyo Urged to Lift Gag Order on Neri

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today dared President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo to stop preventing Secretary Romulo
Neri from testifying anew at the Senate inquiry into
the national broadband controversy and heed the call
of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines
for transparency to curb graft in government.

Pimentel said Neri’s continued refusal to return to
the Senate to complete his testimony is working to his
disadvantage in the face of widespread perception that
he is concealing the truth and covering up the
President’s involvement in the anomalous $329 million
ZTE contract on the national broadband network
project.

Noting the Palace’s apparent inclination to heed the
CBCPs call for the revocation of Executive Order 464
banning executive officials from facing congressional
inquiry without presidential clearance, Pimentel said
the President can show good faith by telling Neri he
is free to go back to the Senate to resume his
testimony.

Neri, chairman of the Commission on Higher Education
(CHED), is under tremendous public pressure to speak
up and supply the missing portions of his testimony.
But Pimentel said Neri could not do so for fear of the
consequences if he defies the President’s gag order.

Apparently, he said Neri is afraid of two things –
first, the threat of being fired from his Cabinet
post, and second, his fear for his life.

Pimentel cited a Senate testimony of Neri’s friend and
former technical consultant, Rodolfo Lozada, that the
CHED chairman and former director general of the
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA),
that Neri had confided to him about the death threats
he had been receiving.

“GMA is using ‘mutually assured destruction’ tactics
to keep Neri away from the Senate,” the minority
leader said.

“Neri knows the President can kick him out from CHED
because he is not qualified for the post and from the
Monetary Board he is no longer NEDA head.”

Pimentel said Neri’s continued to stay in the Cabinet
has become untenable after Lozada testified that Neri
had once described the President as “evil” in one of
their conversations about the ZTE-NBN deal.

Despite this damning information, he said Mrs. Arroyo
has desisted from removing Neri as CHED chairman since
she knows that the moment she does this and loses her
hold on him, nothing will prevent him from going back
to the Senate and from spilling the beans about the
ZTE-NBN irregularity.

Pimentel noted that Neri’s movements are being
restricted as he is being guarded by a team of
soldiers from the Presidential Security Group.

He said he is inclined to think that Neri is willing
to return to the Senate’s witness stand specially in
the light of revelations that the CHED chairman had
met secretly with Senators Panfilo Lacson and Jamby
Madrigal last December 7 at the Asian Institute of
Management.

During that meeting, Secretary Neri supposedly
explained why he is constrained from returning to the
Senate although he broached a proposal for concerned
civil society groups to put up a so-called patriotic
fund to help government officials like him to tide
over financial difficulties after turning
while-blowers and losing their jobs in the process.
-o0o-

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