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President
Arroyo is unlikely to be brought down by the latest mess, even if it does reach
into her bedroom
 Despite days
of protest and feeble echoes of "people power" aimed at toppling
ever-besieged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over a multi-million dollar
scandal, a deep feeling exists that pervasive corruption is so entrenched there
are no good alternatives other than to wait for the current administration to
finish its term.
In the
latest act of political theater in a country where such gestures have been
refined to a high art, on Monday a former official who has accused Arroyo’s husband
and a political ally of corruption gave back a pile of cash he said was being
offered to him in return for his silence.
"I
am returning this because I failed to do my part of the bargain," Rodolfo
Lozada told a Senate hearing looking into the burgeoning scandal over a failed
national broadband deal. In a package handed over by Lozada were bundles of
cash worth half-a-million pesos ($12,300).
He said
the package was given to his family after he was dispatched to Hong Kong earlier this month by his boss, Environment and
Natural Resources Secretary Joselito Atienza. He said the trip abroad and the
money were intended to keep him quiet over a tawdry deal in which Arroyo's
husband Jose Miguel Arroyo and the disgraced chairman of the elections
commission, Benjamin Abalos, have been implicated for soliciting massive
bribes.
The mess
led Arroyo to cancel a $329 million deal with China's state-run ZTE Corp. to
build a national broadband network to advance the country’s inadequate telecommunications
infrastructure.
Lozada, a
key whistleblower in exposing the issue, was lauded in newspaper ads Tuesday by
a group calling itself the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and
Professionals. "We call on all citizens and leaders of our country... Be
Honest. Even if others are not, even if others will not, even if others cannot,"
the ad said. The blue-and-white motif for the appeal suggested that the ad’s
sponsors were devotees of the Virgin Mary.
Also on
Tuesday, Lozada's alma mater, the University
of Santo Tomas, placed
half-page ads praising him for what he has done and calling him a “true
Thomasian.”
 The
outpouring of emotion for Lozada’s attempt to clean up his little corner of the
nation was preceded by a rally last Friday in the Makati business district sponsored by the
Catholic Church, prominent business leaders and wealthy social activists fed up
with the continuing shenanigans of yet another embarrassing government. They turned
up for an evening of protest music and speeches by various figures, including
Joey de Venecia, the son of Jose de Venecia, the former House speaker.
On
Sunday, former President Corazon Aquino and Lozada attended a mass of several
thousand people and later held a press conference to release a manifesto signed
by 60 former cabinet officials calling for current cabinet members to resign.
Opposition
figures say they will return to the streets on February 25 in Makati for an “indignation rally” marking the
anniversary of the original 1986 people power revolt that drove the late
President Ferdinand Marcos from office. It’s not likely to happen again, as
most analysts are betting that Arroyo will ride out this crisis just as she has
so many others since she was installed in office by a popular uprising in 2001
against the last crook in power, President Joseph Estrada.
Nonetheless,
it is unusual even in the Philippines
where scandals are reported regularly in the country’s raucous press, to have
one laid out this clearly, and to involve so many top figures. As has been
widely reported, the current scandal revolves around a contract awarded to the
Chinese telecoms company ZTE last year to construct a broadband network. A
flock of high-ranking officials have been named, with Abalos, the one-time
election commissioner, accused of attempting to extort a third of the project’s
cost for a “commission.”
Last year
Joey De Venecia III,
the son of the Speaker of the House, said he believed that Arroyo's husband was
the “coach" who packaged the entire contract between the Philippine
government and ZTE. De Venecia also bid on the project and his father was
recently driven from his post in apparent retaliation over the scandal.
The deal
was suspended last September when two lawsuits challenged its legality. Senate
investigations were opened, but they were stalled after Lozada left for Hong Kong. He later claimed to have been abducted for
nearly two days on his return.
The chief
executive of the state-owned Philippine Forest Corp. and an IT expert, Lozada was
brought in to evaluate the broadband bids. When he reemerged, mysteriously
un-kidnapped, Lozada testified that Abalos and the first gentleman were involved
in receiving a "commission" from ZTE in exchange for being awarded
the NBN contract in closed bidding.
 Although
the Senate has announced investigations to see whether someone in fact abducted
Lozada, in testimony he downplayed the event, claiming that there was a
"misunderstanding." Lozada testified that the broadband project
should have only cost roughly $132 million, but that Abalos, as a major
negotiator with ZTE officials, demanded a "commission" of $130
million and threatened Lozada when told that the commission was too high.
Long-time
activist Lidy Nakpil of the Philippines Freedom from Debt Coalition said that the
issue was not simply the commission, but the financing of the deal itself. She
said the Philippines has a long history of financing large projects through
loans from foreign development banks and she worried that the country was
becoming indebted to China in a new round of such deals.
China has recently eclipsed the US as the Philippines’ major trading partner
and now plays a major role in such loans. The North Luzon Railway project was
funded through a $400 million loan from China's Exim Bank to the Department
of Finance, and Abalos, as well as ZTE, pushed for the NBN contract to be financed
in a similar manner.
In both
cases, the Chinese government had exclusive rights to choose the contractors
with no public bidding. ZTE has also offered preferential loans channeled
through the Chinese Exim Bank in Africa, often
quite successfully.
ZTE has
issued a statement saying that it has "done nothing wrong nor did it bribe
anyone to get this project."
Well-known
business and community figure Teresita Ang See, the founder of Kaisa Para Sa
Kaunlaran, a Filipino-Chinese cultural organization, said, “It is unfortunate
that China is involved in
this because we believe China
can help the Philippines
in a big way. China
can relate and understand the problems of the developing world."
Other
protestors also said they do not believe China is the issue, that the rot
starts at home. "It is our government that is the problem, not China",
said activist Vim Santos.
The
involvement of Joey de Venecia in the scandal has tantalized the chattering
classes. His company, Amsterdam
Holdings Inc., was the primary rival to ZTE in the broadband deal, but AHI has
no track record in the telecommunications industry. De Venecia filed one of the
two lawsuits last year that led to a temporary restraining order being issued by the
Supreme Court against the ZTE deal. The other lawsuit came from a provincial vice-governor
who argued that the deal violated numerous government laws.
Joey de
Venecia has moved into the protest spotlight recently, appearing at last week’s
rally and at mass with Aquino. At the rally, he told the crowd that the money
spent on the ZTE commission should have been spent on housing and other social
concerns, and shouted “Back off, First Gentleman!” referring to Arroyo's
husband.
 After de
Venecia’s father, a political survivor whose career dates back to the Marcos era,
vouched for his son’s claims, Arroyo engineered his ouster as Speaker of the House.
As speaker, de Venecia has served as Arroyo’s legislative spear carrier and protected
her from numerous attempts at impeachment. He could become a dangerous enemy unless
there is some other deal inside a deal that has yet to be revealed.
Still,
though the affair dominates the media and involves lots of high-level players,
there seems little likelihood that Arroyo will be swept away by the unseemly goings on, anymore than she was by earlier election scandals or the many serious human
rights abuses that have plagued her government. Even during the rally on
Friday, many protesters said that it would not reach a tipping point.
"We
don't expect it to snowball and remove GMA [President Gloria Arroyo] from
power", said activist Vim Santos.
"A
people’s uprising is the only alternative to elections, but people are even
more cynical about that," Nakpil said.
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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had such high hopes for her presidency she has learned like the vast majority of her predecessors that she is only one cog in the wheel of a corrupt government that she cannot control. The Philippines is the land of petty cabs, cell phones, and government projects that were envisioned to help the Philippine people but in fact only affected the quality of life of corrupt business and government officials, that are never held accountable. When I read this fascinated article well prepared It gives the reader a momentary insight of one of the most corrupt and disconnected (when it comes to its people) governments in southeast Asia. Should we feel sorry for Mr. Rodolfo Lozada or should we ask a more serious question, what is his real motivation in returning half-a-million pesos ($12,300) or was he upset that it was to little for the risk he took and further how much has he spent or deposited in other banks around the world? The latest national broadband network scandal the question should be how was this deal going to benefit the average Filipino? Time and time again the government invests in projects that are costly over budgeted and only benefit the few military, government, and business icons of the country when will the Philippine people stand up and take control of the country. In the mean time the government of the Philippines needs to construct a museum surrounding the Luzon nuclear power plant and pay admission so that the billions of dollars borrowed and wasted start being paid back in the land of petty cabs, cell phones, and nuclear power plant that does not work. The question that the average Filipino must ask themselves has there quality of life over all increased or decreased because of the Philippine government?