Analysis
Smoke and mirror tricks
By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:17:00 03/28/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Two important consequences flowed from the Supreme Court decision upholding former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri's refusal to answer at the Senate's NBN-ZTE inquiry three sensitive questions.
The first is that the 9-6 decision, one of the closest rulings arrived at by the Court in seven years, stalled deeper the Senate investigations into the cancelled NBN deal and a host of other corruption-tainted transactions of the Arroyo administration.
The three critical issues upon which the NBN inquiry stumbled centered on Neri's testimony last September--more specifically, on his conversations with President Macapagal-Arroyo after he told her that former Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos had offered him a P200-million bribe in exchange for his endorsement of the NBN-ZTE project. The three questions are: (1) whether the President followed up on the deal; (2) whether the President instructed Neri to give priority to the project; and (3) whether the President gave the go-ahead on the project despite allegations of bribery.
In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Reynato Puno held that the three questions were critical to the establishment of the President's involvement in the allegedly corrupt deal. He said that the questions "demand information on how the President herself weighed options...she considered in concluding the NBN-ZTE contract."
Although the majority decision allows Neri to appear in further Senate hearings, he cannot be compelled to elaborate on the three questions. Thus, his appearance in the Senate could be a dance around these questions and reduce the hearings into a farce. Most senators quickly realized and protested they had been had by the Court's decision. Some senators and legal observers were quick to point out that the 9-6 decision was handed down by a Court of 15 members, packed with 12 of her appointees, including the most recent, Justice Arturo Brion, who participated in the making of that decision.
The Court's decision had an immediate effect in paralyzing the momentum of investigations related to the NBN deal. Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, chair of the blue ribbon committee, decided to suspend indefinitely the hearings until the senators shall have come to terms with the decision in regard to how deep they can go to the bottom of things. "Even while they say they have not diminished our power, they have handcuffed our power to investigate," he said. "It will definitely hamper investigations .... The ZTE investigation will continue but not the hearings."
Aside from its paralyzing impact on legislative inquiry, the decision gave the administration a major judicial victory, this one coming after a series of setbacks in the Court, which had rebuffed the President on her effort to stop Cabinet officials from testifying at congressional hearings without her permission; on her declaration of a state of national emergency in 2005; and on her tough crackdown on street protesters.
The President did not lose time to take advantage of the decision by refocusing public attention on the glowing performance of the economy (of which she has been making extravagant claims) away from the corruption scandals that have plagued her administration during most of her second (elected) term. The decision has allowed her to engage the nation in a game of smoke and mirrors magnifying the claimed economic gains.
A day after the Court handed down the decision, the President celebrated it with a speech at the Philippine Development Forum in Clark. She reveled in the stellar 7.3-percent growth performance of the gross national product in 2007. She said she was stepping down at the end of her term in 2010 to leave a legacy of a modernized and prosperous country. She gloated that the "real story of 2008" was that "It has been a very good year for the Philippine economy, not in over 20 years, but in over 30 years. As we all know, our economy grew by 7.3 percent."
Ignoring the corruption scandals, she told her audience, including foreign investors, that "The best thing we can do for the remainder of my term, until I step down in 2010, is to stay focused on further economic reforms while providing peace, order and stability. Our last two years will be dedicated to one objective: invest, invest and invest some more in the nation." She said "political noise" did not have "to interfere with economic progress and reform."
Her claims flew in the face of the recent drumfire of concerted criticism from a number of independent economists, overseas think tanks and international financial institutions, including the Asian Development Bank, all of which emphasized not only the theme that the high growth rate is overstated but also the constraints to sustained high growth.
In her euphoric mood, the President ignored the cascade of critical assessments of the high growth of the past three decades. She claimed, with a straight face that her administration created a million jobs and drew big foreign investments. Her claims collided with recent critiques that employment creation and investment rate were two of the most serious downsides indicating the hollowness of the record-breaking high growth. International financing institutions, including the ADB, International Monetary Fund and foreign banks, have warned that the 7.3-percent growth cannot be sustained in the coming years. They also warned of deflation--to 6 percent or even lower. These critiques will be examined in subsequent columns.
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