GOTCHA, Published in The Philippines Star, Wednesday, March 5, 2008
ANC’s Ricky Carandang wrote in his blog an article similar to mine Monday on treason and plunder. Although also noting that Chinese loans suddenly poured in after RP allowed joint exploration of the Spratlys, his was a week ahead. Ricky based his piece on a report he did for ABS-CBN’s The Correspondents on Feb. 19. Given the time it takes to research, he likely was also ahead of Barry Wain’s report in the Far Eastern Economic Review on “Manila’s bungle in the South China Sea.” The son of a gun scooped us.
In “Treason” Ricky outlined RP’s overlapping claim over the Spratlys with China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. The seven claimants reckon the island chain, which Filipinos call Kalayaan, holds huge reserves of oil and natural gas. Past Philippine Presidents had always stood defiant against Chinese incursions in Philippine waters and occupied Kalayaan. But under Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, RP signed with China a pact for joint seismic studies and oil-and-gas exploration. In so doing, RP enraged its neighbors. In appeasement, Vietnam had to be let in on the deal.
With Ricky’s permission, excerpts from his piece:
“Aside from angering our neighbors and potentially undermining regional stability, Arroyo’s action may also be illegal. Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez — then-acting justice secretary — told former Senator Frank Drilon, then allied with the administration, that she believed the deal violated the Constitution. While it was between the state-owned oil firms (PNOC of the Philippines and CNOOC of China), it implicitly gave China access to our oil reserves. Foreign affairs officers were also upset because the deal effectively strengthened China and Vietnam’s claim to the Spratlys.
“Why would Arroyo sign a deal that potentially undermines regional stability, possibly grants China parity rights to oil reserves in the Spratlys that we claim as ours, and likely violates our Constitution? After the Spratly deal was signed, the Chinese government committed $2 billion in official development assistance a year to the Philippines until 2010, when Arroyo is supposed to step down from office. My sources tell me that the Spratly deal was an explicit precondition to the loans.
“For the Arroyo administration the China loans are particularly appealing. Not so much because the interest rates are so low and the repayment terms so lenient, but because Chinese loans do not have the cumbersome requirements that loans from the US, Japan, the EU, and big multilateral lenders have. Requirements for documentation, bidding, transparency and other details that make it very difficult for corrupt public officials to commit graft. In November last year, such requirements made it impossible for some government officials and private individuals with sticky fingers to avail themselves of the World Bank’s generosity.
“Given China’s laxity with certain conditions, it’s no wonder why almost every big-ticket government project funded by Chinese ODA has been the subject of allegations of graft and corruption. There’s Northrail, Cyber Education, the Fuhua agricultural projects, Southrail, and of course the ZTE National Broadband project.”
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It’s true, what new ZTE scam witness Dante Madriaga said at the Senate last week — that we first corresponded only in late Oct. 2007. The inquiry had just adjourned for the year. Dante e-mailed me that he held additional info on the exposé I had begun in March. He also wished to clear his name amidst reports that he was peddling his testimony for millions of pesos. We eyeballed on Nov. 8, then exchanged more e-mails.
And so he became one of my many sources on this sordid deal. But from that meeting till he appeared at the Senate on Feb. 26, I used his info only once: on Jan. 28, 2008, in “ZTE consultant bares true NBN costs.” It came as a sequel to my piece of Jan. 23, “Telecoms experts discover NBN price discrepancies.” To prove first-hand knowledge, Dante had shown me personal files and notes on prices for Equipment and Services itemized in the ZTE contract. These indicated overprice of $231 million, more than the $197 million that Joey de Venecia and other telecoms men swore they knew.
I refrained from using Dante’s narration of advances by ZTE to “the Filipino group.” This came out, however, in the column of Ellen Tordesillas. At the Senate, Dante said that since that column already was circulating in the Internet, he decided he might as well come out and testify. So there...
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Here are more cell phone numbers used to text black propaganda against the Opposition, ZTE scam whistle-blowers, and VP Noli de Castro. But I doubt if the National Telecommunications Commission will ever do anything about it: 0915-4129034, 0915-4129035, 0915-4129036, 0915-4129039, 0915-8817342, 0915-8817343, 0915-8854271, 0916-3949827.
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E-mail:
jariusbondoc@workmail.com
