According to Virgilio Peña, former chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) the government does not have the know-how to evaluate the highly technical and pricey projects sophisticated projects in the field of the information and communications technology (ICT). Projects exactly like the NBN. Given Peña’s credentials as a former CICT chairman and on the so-called e-governance, his word carries some weight. And I am afraid that Malacañang will be quick to exploit Peña’s declarations to suit its own agenda.

I am sure Peña meant well by what he said and it may raise a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed. But the first problem with Peña’s declarations is that the timing is suspect. In any other time, perhaps, we would have simply accepted it as one of the facts of life of living in the Philippines and charged it to experience. But in the midst of the NBN controversy, it is potentially explosive. If we accept as gospel truth Peña’s statement that we lack the necessary technical expertise, this raises questions about Lozada’s own standing as a witness in the NBN scandal. Well, what kind of an "expert witness" on the NBN scam could Lozada be, if there are supposedly no experts in the field? That could be one point that can be gleaned from the point Peña is trying to raise.

More sinister is the possibility that Malacañang may also use this supposed absence of ICT expertise to make it appear that Aling Gloria’s role in the NBN scandal and her subsequent liability was all an honest mistake and lacking any evil intentions. It is a strong possibility. After all, if there was nothing wrong in Aling Gloria’s mind about the "Hello, Garci…" scandal that could not be cured by an apology, then there is also nothing wrong in this thwarted act of plunder that cannot be cured by another apology as well. As the police are wont to say, the problem with crooks is that they tend to use the same modus operandi.

The interesting part about Peña’s declarations is that it directly contradicts previous statements made by DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza. When Lozada first surfaced to tell all that he knows about the NBN scandal, Mendoza was right there after trying to chop his credibility down to size. Mendoza’s first claim was that Lozada was no expert at all and that his agency, in fact, had the "real" experts of the NBN project. And, I will agree with Mendoza up to the point that the DOTC has its own experts, especially from its Telecommunications Office (Telof). The Telof, after all was an integral component of the CICT back when it was still a creature under the Office of the President and not yet attached to the DOTC. I would not sell those Telof guys short considering their previous undertakings, many of which are comparable if not bigger in scale than the aborted NBN project that they were also expected to implement. So, between Mendoza and Peña, I do not know who is either lying or mistaken, which makes for an interesting toss-up.