First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, who left the country shortly before the Senate started public hearings on the suspended $329-million national broadband network (NBN) contract between the government and the Chinese firm ZTE Corp., is expected to return to the country today.
Sources confirmed to The STAR that President Arroyo’s husband and his companion Benito Araneta will arrive on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong this afternoon.
Mr. Arroyo is expected to pass through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) as quietly as when he left for a two-week vacation last Sept. 17.
Arroyo will arrive hours after President Arroyo leaves for China and India today.
He left the country two weeks ago just before the Senate Blue Ribbon committee started its investigation on the ZTE scandal.
Businessman Jose de Venecia III, son of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. and majority stockholder of Amsterdam Holdings Inc. that lost the bid for the NBN project to ZTE Corp., had testified in the Senate hearing that he met the President’s husband last March at the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club, where Arroyo told him to “back off” from the NBN project.
The Wack Wack meeting was allegedly organized by Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza and was attended by Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos, who was allegedly brokering the ZTE proposal.
The young De Venecia said the Wack Wack meeting was supposed to have been a reconciliation talk between himself and Abalos. – Michael Punongbayan