MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Panfilo Lacson is considering a reexamination of the controversial national broadband network (NBN) deal with ZTE Corp. of China that rocked the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Lacson said there was never any real closure on the issue just like most of the other controversies hounding the Arroyo administration.
“That’s under consideration. If there are new documents, why not? This the opportune time to really put closure to all these issues,” Lacson said.
Lacson admitted that most of the issues against the Arroyos have been forgotten, notwithstanding the series of probes in the past. He said the reason was probably because there are just too many controversies.
“There were so many and these piled up to the point that we got tired of investigating and the Filipino people got tired of watching and listening to the hearings,” he said.
Lacson said the NBN deal with China’s ZTE Corp. was among the most controversial issues faced by Arroyo during her administration.
Along with the “Hello, Garci” controversy, which became the strongest basis for the impeachment complaints filed against Arroyo, Lacson said all of them seemed to have fizzled out.
Lacson said a reexamination of the NBN-ZTE deal would reveal several other questionable transactions that were tied up with it, all of which were signed in the presence of Arroyo.
“We did not realize at the time when we were investigating and exposing the NBN-ZTE that it was not limited to two projects but five projects all in all,” Lacson pointed out.
He said the main focus of the investigations at the time was on the NBN project because this was where allegations were made about multi-million peso kickbacks offered to various government officials in order to have a favorable endorsement of the project. – With Evelyn Macairan