ZTE’s latest victim is Speaker no less

Roel Pulido’s impeachment complaint against Gloria Arroyo is all of three pages short. Reading it gives the impression that it’s not the President but Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. whom he wants to unseat. The complaint in fact takes off from the ethics case Pulido had filed against de Venecia two weeks ago at the House of Reps, which he also used for a separate graft rap before the Ombudsman. So the complaint, denounced by the Opposition as phony, is in effect but a second rerun.

Pulido took off from the testimony of de Venecia’s son Joey III at the Senate about the ZTE scam. Joey had recounted Comelec chief Ben Abalos’s request through his dad for a meeting, to which de Venecia obliged by hosting breakfast. That, for Pulido, was an offense by Arroyo — really. Many other parts of the supposedly anti-Arroyo indictment were about de Venecia. By the Speaker’s reckoning, “60 percent of the complaint is about me.”

Pulido’s only two allegations against Arroyo, the Opposition pooh-poohed as weak. Weak, because there was no mention of many other items from the Senate hearings from which he picked up his “statement of facts.” That is why the Opposition, the group that truly wants to oust Arroyo, is cool to this impeachment rap.

The first of those two assertions was Joey’s account of a golf game in Shenzhen, China, during which Arroyo and Abalos discussed the ZTE deal. (Pulido again included de Venecia there as an active participant, although Joey’s recollection was very different, thus betraying the ulterior aim of the complaint.) The second was the testimony of Sec. Romy Neri reporting to Arroyo the Abalos bribe offer of P200 million, about which the President did nothing.

Strangely there was no reference to Arroyo’s turnaround from her original preference in Nov. 2006 for the broadband project to be undertaken by private groups at no cost, risk or loan to government. There was no mention of her leaving the bedside of a very sick husband to witness the contract signing in China in Apr. 2007. There was no citing of Joey’s most explosive revelation: the “back off” order from Arroyo’s husband Mike. There was no word of Arroyo’s refusal to attend the Senate hearings for health reasons, although he has just finished traveling to six European and Asian cities in two weeks. There was no reference to the contriving of a theft of the contracts in order to conceal the contents from the public. There was no inclusion of Malacañang’s later contriving of a “discreet probe of the bribery”, in which not one of the principal players were interrogated.

 Those items, plus more had Pulido done some research or waited for another Senate hearing, could have bolstered his case. But strengthening a case, says Opposition leaders, is not his intention. Inoculation is, for by being the first to file an impeachment complaint against Arroyo, Pulido would also be able to pre-empt a genuine and superior one to be filed by the Opposition, if at all. Why, the sole congressman-endorser of his case is even an Arroyo ally. And Arroyo party operatives tried to bribe four Opposition congressmen in vain into signing. That is how bogus the rap is.

But the false intention apparently worked. As of yesterday afternoon, de Venecia was ready to inhibit from the case out of delicadeza, or else be accused of conflict of interest because of his inclusion in the bum rap. A deputy was set to refer the Pulido case to the committee on justice, to be trashed as planned. Thus, a real impeachment rap, endorsed by Opposition men and with no need for bribes, would no longer be accepted because of the Constitutional limit to only one complaint per year per impeachable officer.

Originally de Venecia had planned to swiftly investigate first the attempt to corrupt congressmen before sending the impeachment rap to the justice body. But 189 congressmen allegedly had met yesterday morning in Malacañang to plot his ouster should he follow that logical timetable. If that is true, it would seem that the House has again allowed Malacañang to interlope.

There is a way for the House to redeem itself. It can declare the Pulido complaint insufficient in form and substance, thus nonexistent. But that’s unlikely to happen. According to Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora, most of the 189 were given envelopes with P500,000 cash.

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