JDV faces probe, ouster from Lakas

Former speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. may face criminal investigation and ouster from the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats over his efforts to have his son bag the multimillion-dollar national broadband network (NBN) contract with the government and his attacks on the party, officials said yesterday.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita and Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza, in separate statements, said there could be criminal proceedings against De Venecia and his son and namesake Jose “Joey” de Venecia III for trying to illegally push an NBN project proposal that is grossly disadvantageous to the government.

Mendoza said De Venecia has violated Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits relatives of government officials from entering into contracts with the government.

With the Supreme Court junking with finality Joey’s case against the government’s aborted NBN deal with ZTE Corp. of China, Mendoza said De Venecia engaged in forum shopping and found an opportunity in the impeachment hearings at the justice committee of the House of Representatives.

He said the Pangasinan congressman “twisted facts and tried to mislead and direct away our attention from the truth” before the House justice committee.

Mendoza added that while De Venecia claimed it was First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo who lobbied for ZTE Corp. to bag the deal, “nothing he said however shows that the First Gentleman did by word or action.”

He said it was the Chinese government that picked ZTE Corp.

“In contrast, JDV himself intervened and exerted his influence for the approval of his son’s Amsterdam Holdings’ build-operate-transfer (BOT) proposal,” Mendoza said.

He added De Venecia “brazenly asked for the Department of Transportation and Communications’ unconditional endorsement of Amsterdam Holdings’ BOT proposal to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).”

He also disputed De Venecia’s testimony that a golf game with ZTE Corp. executives and the First Couple in Shenzhen, China in 2006 shifted President Arroyo’s policy of preferring BOT deals over government-to-government contracts on the NBN project.

Mendoza said as early as October 2006, the Commission on Communications and Information Technology recommended to NEDA that the NBN project be pursued through a government-to-government contract.

He said De Venecia also made “glaring omissions” in his testimony, the first of which is that under the BOT Law, an unsolicited proposal like that of Amsterdam Holdings is prohibited as the NBN is listed under the Medium Term Philippine Development Program.

“Second, relatives of the Speaker of the House are prohibited from being interested in government contracts. His son is the owner of Amsterdam Holdings,” Mendoza said.

He said Amsterdam Holdings “had no money, no telecommunications franchise, no technical knowledge or competence.”

“It was a shell company meant to exploit a government contract to be awarded through JDV’s influence and intervention,” he said. 

He denied that the proposal would not cost the government a centavo since Amsterdam was supposed to charge the government service fees.

JDV faces ouster

Meanwhile, Lakas CMD chief legal counsel Sergio Apostol said De Venecia faces ouster for committing acts inimical to the interest of the party and branded as “without substance” the impeachment complaint against Mrs. Arroyo.

Apostol, in a statement, said De Venecia will be disciplined for directly attacking the head of the administration party in his testimony before the justice committee.

He chided De Venecia for being “a sour grape and a born loser,” recalling that the Pangasinan congressman forced himself to be the Lakas-CMD presidential bet in 1998 despite poor ratings, which eventually led to his crushing defeat in the hands of former President Joseph Estrada.

“Mr. De Venecia was literally routed and almost brought down Lakas on the road to perdition,” Apostol said, adding that the former speaker should have then resigned out of delicadeza.

“But this is now the end of the road for JDV. It’s time for him to pack his bags or face the ignominy of getting ousted,” he said, adding that the former speaker has no more clout and following within Lakas-CMD.

He also branded De Venecia’s testimony as lacking in material evidence and was merely an echo of what was written in his biography.

“You cannot impeach the incumbent President on mere quotations from a book you want to launch and sell to the public. He should produce documentary proofs to substantiate his claims,” Apostol said.

He added, “Nothing in the law says that when a president plays golf in China or elsewhere, he or she is committing an impeachable offense and should therefore be tried.”

“An impeachment complaint must contain statements of facts. Playing golf in China is not an impeachable offense,” he emphasized.

“I think they all know too well that an impeachment complaint is not like a college term paper you submit to the class professor as a requirement to graduate,” Apostol said, referring to De Venecia and other opposition stalwarts behind the impeachment move against Mrs. Arroyo.

He said people behind the attempt to impeach Mrs. Arroyo committed great blunders by even including opinion surveys.

“If these were so, nobody among all the Presidents who sat in Malacañang could have survived their terms. Surveys involving 2,500 respondents do not have any legal effect on the guilt or non-guilt of any accused. As a matter of fact, they do not even reflect the national sentiment,” Apostol said. – Rainier Allan Ronda