JOSE Miguel "Mike" Arroyo denied allegations
of former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. that he suggested that the
national broadband project between the Philippine government and
China’s ZTE Corp be undertaken as a government-to-government
deal.
"I never suggested anything… Sinungaling iyan
si JDV, huwag kang maniwala diyan," he told reporters.
The First Gentleman was interviewed at the
St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City where he stayed
overnight Saturday following a bout of diarrhea. He was
discharged around 12:35 p.m. yesterday
He was with delegation of President Arroyo
for the APEC summit in Lima, Peru but he experienced abdominal
pains forcing their plane to make an emergency landing in Osaka,
Japan around 11 p.m. Friday.
De Venecia, in his biography "Global
Filipino: The Authorized Biography of Jose de Venecia Jr., the
Visionary Five-Time Speaker of the House of Representatives of
the Philippines," said the First Gentleman suggested the
government-to-government scheme in undertaking the NBN project
during a supposed secret meeting in Shenzhen, China on Nov. 2,
2006.
De Venecia said the First Couple hardly said
anything during the meeting but after lunch at the ZTE
headquarters, the First Gentleman reportedly made the suggestion
and the President later changed her policy of undertaking the
NBN project from a build-operate-transfer scheme to a
government-to-government deal.
De Venecia wrote that this resulted in the Philippine
government’s issuing a loan guarantee and awarding the project
to ZTE Corp. The $329-million broadband project was cancelled in
October 2007 by the President. – Jocelyn Montemayor
