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Iloilo Vice-Governor Rolex Suplico on Wednesday asked
the Supreme Court to nullify the controversial broadband contract
between the government and Chinese company ZTE Corp.
In a 129-page petition the former
congressman said the $329-million contract to build a National
Broadband Network violates the Procurement Act, the
Build-Operate-Transfer Law and the Telecommunications Policy Act
which calls for the privatization of all telecommunications
projects.
Suplico said the contract was
also one of the reasons why Romulo Neri was pulled out as
Socio-Economic Planning Secretary to temporarily head the Commission
on Higher Education.
He said he had anticipated that
the Department of Justice would consider the contract as an
executive agreement that does not need a public bidding.
In an interview, Suplico said
Neri was demoted to CHED to keep him out of the decision-making
process on the escalating controversy hounding the NBN project.
“Neri was taken out of the loop
on the NBN Project because he now shares a different view on its
viability and regularity. He was demoted for giving the right advice
to the President,” he said.
Neri had recommended to President
Arroyo that the telecommunication project be implemented by the
private sector at no cost to the government. Based on transcripts of
their meeting on the Cyber Corridor Initiative in November last
year, Mrs. Arroyo agreed with Neri.
But apparently, Neri was forced
to endorse the proposal that the project be carried out by ZTE
through an alleged government-to-government agreement, and not
through a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) scheme as had been agreed
upon, Suplico said.
“Neri had no choice but to toe
the line. There’s nothing much he could do but to endorse it, as
he was apparently kept in the dark until the final stages of the ZTE
agreement had been drawn-up. But among colleagues and his close
circle of friends, he has maintained that this deal was a mistake
and that it should be undertaken by the private sector by way of BOT,”
Suplico said.
Under the deal, ZTE will set up
the network using funds the Philippine government would loan from
the Chinese government and turn over its operation to the government
after it is completed. The deal also contained a “sovereign
guarantee” clause which requires the government to refund ZTE in
case of financial losses.
Neri had preferred that instead
of loaning money from the Chinese government just to establish a
national Internet backbone, the government should have allowed the
private sector to build the network.
--Maricel V. Cruz
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