SATURDAY |FEBRUARY 16, 2008| PHILIPPINES

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Senators slam ZTE arrogance


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

 

 


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