SENATORS yesterday slammed the "arrogance" of
Chinese firm ZTE Corp. for its refusal to permit its officials
to testify in the NBN broadband probe and for saying it will not
allow itself to be dragged into any "political circus."
Minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said, "ZTE
acts as if it were a superpower crushing weak nations in a
hegemonic drive."
Majority leader Francis Pangilinan said: "The
Senate cannot and will not be cowed by threats or hardball
tactics coming from persons or foreign or local corporations,
ZTE included."
Pimentel has called on ZTE chair Fu Yong and
Chinese embassy commercial attaché Fan Yang to testify. "We
won't let ZTE arrogance petrify us, Fu and Fan must appear."
He said Fu and Fan must not squander the
opportunity to clear things and resolve the controversy in the
light of revelations of star witness Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr.
that the ZTE-NBN contract was grossly overpriced.
He said should the Blue Ribbon panel fail to
act on the arrogance of ZTE officials, he would personally ask
the foreign affairs department to declare them persona non grata.
Sen. Richard Gordon said: "ZTE Corp. is very
arrogant. They should help us in the investigation by showing
their books or financial records to clarify if their company has
offered money to high Filipino officials."
The Senate committees on trade and commerce,
on national defense and security committees, and Blue Ribbon
asked the Supreme Court to set aside the freeze order it issued
staying the arrest of acting Higher Education chair Romulo Neri
for his failure to appear in the joint committee hearings on the
broadband project.
In a 38-page comment, the Senate committees
said the arrest warrant on Neri should be allowed to be
implemented to complete its investigation on the scrapped NBN
project with ZTE Corp.
The committees said petitioner's claim of
executive privilege does not authorize his absolute refusal to
obey the subpoena issued by the respondent committees.
The committee said that the assailed arrest order was issued
in valid exercise of its legislative powers in light of the
repeated refusal of Neri to appear and in invoking executive
privilege. - JP Lopez
