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The key witness in the ongoing Senate probe of the
botched $330-million national broadband network deal, Rodolfo
“Jun” Lozada Jr., is no Clarissa Ocampo, and nothing will come
out of the investigation of the scrapped deal with China’s
ZTE Corp., Sen. Joker Arroyo said on Tuesday.
Clarissa Ocampo was the supposed
star witness in the impeachment trial of then-President Joseph
Estrada who testified that she was only about one foot away when
Estrada opened the bank account of “Jose Velarde.”
Arroyo said that unlike Ocampo,
who did not give any opinion on what had transpired and merely told
what she had seen, Lozada even said that an overprice of $65 million
for the broadband deal would have been right by him.
“Lozada gave a lot of opinion
in his testimony, instead of giving straightforward answers to
questions,” the senator noted. He said a psychologist found Lozada
“bipolar.”
Arroyo also questioned why Lozada
is being treated as an “expert” witness when he had not even
submitted his bona fides (credentials and references) that would
qualify him as such.
Nothing would come out of the
investigation being conducted by the blue-ribbon committee, he
predicted.
“The Senate committee of the
whole investigated the Northrail in the Thirteenth Congress, but no
committee report came out [of it],” Arroyo pointed out.
Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile recently
called for the reopening of the $500-million Northrail probe by the
blue-ribbon committee.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Arroyo
was to blame for the absence of any committee report because he was
then the head of the blue-ribbon committee.
Arroyo, however, insisted that
since the inquiry was conducted by the Senate as a collective body,
then presiding officer Senate President Franklin Drilon should have
been the one to prepare the committee report.
Senate Majority Leader Francis
Pangilinan said no report on the Northrail inquiry came out because
Executive Order 464 prevented the subpoenaed executive officials
from testifying before the Senate.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago
remarked that had Lozada testified before her when she was still a
judge, she would have cut short his display of emotionalism.
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano,
chairman of the blue ribbon, defended Lozada from Santiago’s
charge, saying “those scriptwriters in government should be the
ones to be given the Oscar award. Any logical mind will say Lozada
is sincere and is telling the truth.”
Meanwhile, embattled former
chairman of the Commission on Elections Benjamin Abalos Sr. told The
Manila Times that he can sleep soundly and wonders if Lozada can do
the same.
While sleeping is not a problem
for him, Abalos wonders how Lozada can sleep despite peddling
“lies” under oath before the Senate, with the entire nation
listening.
During a separate interview with
television station ABS-CBN, he said he remains unfazed by the
allegations of bribery, corruption and threatening to kill a
government consultant that Lozada hurled against him.
The Senate blue ribbon committee
will go to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Thursday at 10
a.m. to reenact the alleged abduction of Lozada allegedly by men
belonging to the Police Security and Protection Agency upon his
arrival from Hong Kong on February 5.
Meanwhile, several members of the
120,000-strong Philippine National Police are “dismayed” over
the involvement of their organization in the “abduction” of
Lozada.
Their chief, Director-General
Avelino Razon Jr., earlier denied that Lozada, former president of
the government-run Philippine Forest Corp., was not “abducted”
by anyone from his agency.
Still, the police leadership
believes that the Senate investigation of the broadband deal is not
enough to fuel an uprising similar to the so-called bloodless
revolts in 1986 and 2001.
“The report is very general …
as of now, we have not seen any reason that there would be a similar
[people power revolt] situation, but we are still on the watch,”
national police spokesman and Senior Supt. Nicanor Bartolome told
reporters during a forum.
The military, on the other hand,
remains calm, shying away from the brewing political tension caused
by the ongoing Senate investigation.
Maj. Gen. Fernando Mesa,
commander of the military’s National Capital Regional Command,
said they have not monitored any movement in the military.
“I don’t think that [the
Senate probe] would have an effect on our soldiers since this is
part of democracy,” Mesa told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo.
--Efren L. Danao, Francis Earl A. Cueto and Anthony Vargas
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