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By Efren L. Danao, Senior
Reporter
SEN. Panfilo Lacson said his
“surprise witness” Leo San Miguel, a former consultant for ZTE
Corp., had given him some leads on the allegedly overpriced national
broadband project during their three meetings.
“I will pursue the paper trail
based on the leads he had given me,” Lacson said Friday.
In his testimony Wednesday that
surprised and irked Lacson, San Miguel denied any direct information
on advances or kickbacks.
An earlier witness, Dante
Madriaga, had claimed that San Miguel told him about the $41 million
in advances given to a Filipino group by ZTE Corp., the Chinese firm
that won the contract for the $330-million project.
Although San Miguel had denied
almost everything that he had told him in their three previous
meetings, he had provided some information on payoffs and advances,
Lacson said.
He added that San Miguel’s
offer of information made him believe that the witness had a change
of heart between their meeting Tuesday evening and the following
morning’s testimony.
Lacson denied he was set up by
San Miguel and claimed the witness had chosen to perjure himself
because of alleged pressure from Malacañang, a charge the Palace
denied.
Sen. Richard Gordon said
Lacson’s predicament could have been averted had the Senate
adopted his proposal to make witnesses submit a sworn statement
prior to appearing at Senate hearings.
He added that the proposal to
require San Miguel and fellow witnesses Jose “Joey” de Venecia
3rd, Madriaga and Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada Jr. to undergo a lie
detector test is only good for publicity, but would not help the
inquiry.
He warned however that the
results could not be admissible as evidence and could not be used to
charge anybody with perjury.
“Senators must not browbeat
witnesses and virtually declare them guilty even before a report
could be made,” Gordon said. “They might believe they could get
away with this because they know they are pursuing a popular
line.”
Palace statement
Comments made by former Cabinet
officials who disputed recent rosy government reports about the
state of the economy amounted to “sourgraping,” Press Secretary
Ignacio Bunye said Friday.
“These former government
officials very well know that this is the only administration able
to deliver 28 consecutive quarters of growth,” he added.
Bunye was reacting to a joint
statement made by some 80 former Cabinet officials who claimed that
the steady economic growth and poverty reduction under the Arroyo
administration are a “PowerPoint mirage.”
The group, called the Former
Senior Government Officials, slammed President Gloria Arroyo for
“fakery” in her economic reports.
They insisted that “rocking the
boat” and “fighting corruption is never harmful to the
economy,” claiming Malacañang has consistently made these
“insistent reminders to counter the widespread clamor for truth
and accountability in the wake of the NBN-ZTE scandal and following
many other unresolved corruption scandals of this administration.”
NBN is the $330-million National Broadband Network awarded to ZTE.
--With Angelo S. Samonte
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