Unfinished business

Romulo Neri was supposed to appear last Thursday at the Sandiganbayan. The director general of the National Economic and Development Authority during Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency had fought tooth and nail against the subpoena issued to him by the court, which wanted him to testify for the government in connection with the graft case filed against Arroyo over the controversial $329-million national broadband network contract with China’s ZTE Corp.

All three grounds that Neri had invoked in previous motions to quash the subpoena—that he had a right to remain silent, to not incriminate himself, and to protect so-called executive privilege in his communications with his former boss—were thrown out by the Sandiganbayan. That decision was promulgated way back in April last year. It took nearly another year to finally schedule Neri’s appearance at the court.

But no hearing took place last Thursday. The proceedings were postponed, allegedly because witness Joey de Venecia, who exposed the NBN-ZTE anomaly by testifying in the Senate in 2007 that Arroyo’s husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, intervened to get the deal approved, was abroad. Neri once again eluded questioning, and the hearing will reportedly resume in March yet.

The case against the Arroyos and their coaccused—former Commission on Elections chair Benjamin Abalos and former transportation secretary Leandro Mendoza, who died last October—has been proceeding in fits and starts; the glacial pace has all but ensured the banishing of the controversy from the public consciousness, so that it hardly comes up as a contextual issue in the recent appeals for sympathy for Arroyo, now representative of Pampanga and under hospital arrest, which were generated by her VIP visitors including former first lady Imelda Marcos and a gaggle of bishops.

What was Neri supposed to say at the Sandiganbayan? Plenty. For starters, he would have been asked to repeat, clarify and provide more information on his pivotal conversation with Abalos in December 2006, when, during a game of golf, the then Comelec chair casually offered him $10 million to get him to sign off on the ZTE deal. Neri had testified at a hearing of the Senate blue ribbon committee that he told Arroyo about the offer and was told not to accept it. But Arroyo did nothing about Abalos’ act of bribery or the deal itself, which was overpriced by about $130 million and was set for implementation until the exposé by De Venecia. The public uproar led to the project being ultimately scuttled.

Other witnesses had come forward to buttress Neri’s testimony. Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, Neri’s consultant in the NBN project, tagged Abalos as the intended recipient of the project’s $130-million commission. But the “masterminds” of the NBN-ZTE caper, he said, were the Arroyos. Another witness, engineer Dante Madriaga, confirmed the Arroyos’ direct participation in the contract by testifying that the then First Couple had received at least $20 million in exchange for the approval of the deal.

Based on these sworn testimonies, Arroyo stands accused in the Sandiganbayan of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act for her having green-lighted the contract for personal gain, “despite knowledge of the irregularities and anomalies that attended its approval.” She has argued through her lawyers that the case should be dismissed, because anyway the contract was cancelled—a legalistic sleight-of-hand that the court has rejected. Is attempted robbery, after all, expunged if the crime is found out in the nick of time?

The NBN-ZTE deal may have been cancelled, but the case remains a sore piece of unfinished business; it continues to languish in the court, subject to endless postponements and dilatory maneuvers. Arroyo’s camp has exploited the inability of the justice system so far to convict her as proof that she is innocent of the charges against her, and is merely the object of persecution by a vindictive administration. The longer she and her coaccused are denied a final resolution by the courts, the stronger that argument becomes—despite the damning facts.

The Sandiganbayan needs to step up its proceedings, and Romulo Neri must be put on the stand soonest. Until this case is resolved, the nation should not let up in demanding punishment for those that conspired to plunder it.