‘President’s time’

A news dispatch by Agence France Presse from Lima, Peru on May 6 caught my interest about an incident involving former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori. The ex-Peru president reportedly had a laughing fit during his court trial on human rights abuse charges when his former military aides testified that they used to spy on him through the keyhole of his bedroom to see what shirt he was wearing for the day.

Fujimori, 69, is on trial for allegedly having ordered death-squad operations in 1991 and 1992 that killed 24 people opposed to his administration during his 1990-2000 rule in Peru. Fujimori was extradited in September from Chile to Peru but his trial began only in December.

During the trial that day, Fujimori was described as unable to hold back his laughter, to the astonishment of the people inside the courtroom. After a minute-long laughing fit, Fujimori had to cover his face with his hands to bring himself under control. The rest of the AFP news dispatch went this way: “The dam broke when retired army colonel Miguel Bernal Neyra, on the witness stand, said he and other military aides to the president used to spy on him through the keyhole just before he was going to travel somewhere.

“If the president wore short sleeves, he would travel to a warm place, but if he wore heavier clothes, it would mean a trip to colder climes,” Neyra said, adding that he and his colleagues would then dress accordingly on the trip. Fujimori bellowed out guffaws. When he calmed down, Fujimori explained to the judge that his aides never knew where he was going until the very last minute, due to tight security measures to prevent attempts on his life by leftist insurgents and terrorist groups.”

I could relate myself with this rather funny incident from the many anecdotes and vignettes of presidential activities that were not actually stuff for news reportage that I have gathered as a reporter while still covering Malacañang Palace. I have covered many of the official activities, in and out of the Palace, of four sitting Presidents from 1986 to 2005. Or, this started from former President Corazon Aquino to Fidel V. Ramos, then to the shortened term of Joseph Estrada and up to the first five years of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

For the unofficial activities where Palace media coverage is not allowed, these are classified as “President’s Time.” The “President’s Time” may vary from attending to personal or family affairs, or it can be “private” meetings, or it could also be a period for leisure activities like playing golf as in the cases of Mr. Ramos and Mrs. Arroyo who both play this sport well.

This is the same “President’s Time” which Mrs. Arroyo got herself under question anew when she made a sidetrip to Shenzen while on official trip to Hong Kong in November 2006. The question was raised by her arch-enemies who related this “President’s Time” spent with top executives of the ZTE Corp. before the signing and award of the $329 million contract of the national broadband network (NBN) to this Chinese giant telecom company.

The President herself stood as witness to the signing of the NBN-ZTE contract in Boao, China five months later, or in April last year. However, she subsequently cancelled the NBN-ZTE project after a losing bidder, businessman Jose de Venecia III, came forward to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and blew the whistle on overpricing and bribery that allegedly went into the bidding for the project. The young businessman, namesake of former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., owns Amsterdam Holdings Inc. which lost the NBN project to the ZTE.

Since it was classified as a “President’s Time” activity, there was no media coverage of that event. However, photos taken from the President’s golfing trip to Shenzen, along with her husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, recently came out in public. The photos were released to the media, courtesy of the latest whistleblower who vowed to come out and testify at the next Senate hearing on this scandal. His identity still remains under wraps by Iloilo Vice Gov. Rolex Suplico who is the handler of this latest NBN-ZTE whistleblower. Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano immediately jumped at this latest opportunity to bring the NBN-ZTE scandal back to the headlines.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita explained the trip to Shenzen as a “social visit” that the President made just like any other typical business or social visits she makes whenever on official travels abroad. What was not typical, though, to this particular golfing trip to Shenzen was the presence of then Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Benjamin Abalos who turned out to be brokering for the ZTE.

In the past Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE scandal, the young De Venecia testified that his own father was there also in Shenzen and in fact, played golf with the President, the First Gentleman and Abalos. Thus, except for the photos, there was nothing new with the claims of this latest witness of Suplico. The former Congressman from Iloilo insisted that photos of his witness are the smoking gun evidence to directly link the President to the NBN-ZTE deal.

If this is the kind of evidence he has on this case, then President Arroyo would be guilty of every photo she had posed with business executives whose companies entered into many multi-million dollar contracts either with the private sector or with government agencies in the Philippines. She met many of these business executives and investors either on official functions or during “President’s Time” she had here and abroad. Or to put Suplico’s logic steps further, the same could be said against Mrs. Aquino, Ramos and Estrada who had their shares of such poses while on “President’s Time” with people who did business with the government.

By the way, I myself had visited the ZTE headquarters in Shenzen in August 2006 as part of the official tours for the 20 of us journalists invited by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)-China Media Exchange program. We also toured the headquarters of Huawei Corp., which is ZTE’s telecom rival, located in the same city. Unlike President Arroyo, though, I did not have the opportunity to pose with the top ZTE executives we met there.