This is in reaction to the news article on the goodwill visit to China being made by 12 congresswomen led by my wife Rep. Gina P. de Venecia, upon the invitation of the Communist Party of China (“Women lawmakers off to China,” News, 5/10/14).
The article said that I was the “conduit” of China to projects during the Arroyo administration, which included “the joint seismic study in the disputed Spratly Islands among the Philippines, China and Vietnam; the failed North Rail project; the entry of China State Grid Corp in the privatization of the country’s power facilities; and the aborted broadband deal with the Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp.”
1. On the aborted ZTE project, the report conveniently did not mention that it was my son Joey De Venecia III, at great risk to himself, who denounced the corrupt project, and that I supported his exposé and courted Chinese anger, and in the process, lost the speakership to the political forces of then president Gloria Arroyo.
2. I did propose the joint seismic study in the disputed Spratly Islands to solve the conflict over the Spratlys. This was was efficiently implemented by the three governments, and there was peace in the South China Sea for some two years while the program was on; and we could drill for oil and gas in our front yard/backyard in the sea, instead of sending tanker ships to buy oil in the distant Middle East.
Joint exploration and joint development for oil and gas among the claimant nations and equitable ownership and sharing of production, which I proposed since 1974, is perhaps the most realistic and practical way to go, instead of the dangerous confrontation we are seeing between the Philippines and China, and between China and Vietnam.
3. The rail project was suspended because of the failure of the Philippine government to relocate some 30,000 squatters on both sides of several rail track stretches. Chinese President Hu Jin Tao complained to President Arroyo, in New York and in my presence, that there were many long periods when more than 200 Chinese engineers and technicians on the construction site could not do their work because the squatters had not been relocated. I heard this project is now in arbitration.
4. On China State Grid Corp., it won the highly competitive project in international public bidding.
The 12 congresswomen in the May 8-18 visit are on a delicate mission. They are in China to engage in an interparliamentary, people-to-people and women-to-women exchange with Chinese national and provincial leaders to appeal to both China and the Philippines to rebuild the “good neighbor policy” and the 1,000 years of uninterrupted friendship between the Chinese and Filipino peoples, instead of fanning the inflammatory and dangerous tension between the two countries.
—JOSE DE VENECIA,
former speaker, House of Representatives