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Those who wish to doom the Arroyo administration will be ill-served
by getting Chinese Embassy and ZTE officials, or any official from
China, to testify on the canceled (or suspended) NBN deal.
If the allegations of Secretary Romulo Neri and
Rodolfo Noel I. Lozada Jr. about resigned Comelec chairman Benjamin
Abalos and a US$130-million commission are true, ZTE, Chinese
government officials and diplomats will not appear in any
investigative hearing. They will not do or say anything that
will pin down the Arroyo administration.
Even now, China’s state news agencies and
newspapers have evaded publishing stories about the Philippine
ZTE-NBN scandal—but they have been publicizing positive news about
ZTE’s other projects in China and other parts of the world.
The letter from the Chinese embassy that Mr.
Abalos and his lawyer showed at their press conference and on the
Korina Sanchez show will never be authenticated by the Chinese
officials or diplomats—if the accusations against Mr. Abalos are
true. They will not want to be a party to the possible
downfall of the Arroyo regime. The Arroyos are very specially
friendly to the PRC and its leaders. And Chinese officials,
foreign service and trade officers, have never been known to turn
against their friends.
Also, admitting that the bribe offers and
advances were made would also subject the Chinese and ZTE executives
to punishment in China, where the government is now taking the
anticorruption campaign zealously. Chinese businessmen and
officials engaged in suborning Filipinos might be promoting
China’s commercial and geopolitical interests, but there should be
no official proof or admission. Otherwise the guilty parties would,
after a swift trial, be made to kneel and get shot behind the back
of their heads.
If the accusations are false, Chinese officials
may come out formally in defense of Mr. Abalos and the Arroyo
administration. Doing that will make the Arroyos more beholden to
China. But they will, most likely, only do it by issuing a
statement. They would not allow themselves to become actors in the
ZTE Probe Spectacular. And they would not unnecessarily want to be
painted as “enemies” of the opposition figures who could some
day take their turn in the Palace as rulers of the Philippines.
So, if the enemies of the President, her husband
and Mr. Abalos want to act prudently— prudence is not the negative
vice of pusillanimity but the positive virtue of acting in the best
way to achieve a goal—then they better not, as Sen. Aquilino
Pimentel said last Wednesday, make good their threat to summon
Chinese officials to the Blue Ribbon Committee hearing.
Sen. Pimentel and other anti-GMA people should
be cautious about threatening to declare PRC Commercial Attache Fan
Yang persona non grata and to deport ZTE Corp. Chairman Fu Yong for
refuing to shed light on the ZTE NBN project’s dark mysteries.
Instead of pulling Mrs. Arroyo down, the light
from China might instead burnish Mrs. Arroyo’s image.
Why only now, Magdalene?
Whenever senators and congressmen want to
discredit whistleblowers like Rodolfo Lozada and converts against
corruption like former Speaker Jose de Venecia, they ask “Why are
you revealing all these only now?”
That does not mean Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, for
example, does not know that people turn against their former
partners, bosses and benefactors because something awful or awesome
suddenly made them change. It could be something divine, like
the power of God that, on the road to Damascus, made Saul, the
persecutor of Christians, blind and fall from his horse. He turned
into the Christian St. Paul.
Or it could simply be a series of events that a
person could no longer bear—like the moral and physical torments
of Rodolfo Imperial Lozada Jr. Or it could be defeat—and
perceived betrayal—dealt by a longtime ally, which Mr. de Venecia
felt.
Sen. Enrile and, I suppose, other
pro-administration interrogators of Mr. Lozada know this.
Asking “Why only now?” is simply a way to cast doubt on the
purity of the whistleblower’s intentions and to picture him as a
bad person.
But the tactic often backfires. This is when the
subject has been purified by his contrition and his bitter tears,
like those Mary Magdalene shed for her sins.
Taunts, like Sergio Apostol’s “crying
lady” diatribe against Mr. Lozada, only make him a more credible
figure.
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