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Dean Amado Velez of the University of the East College of Law in Manila told a crowd of journalists that ZTE officials could be among the respondents because of an international agreement on the prevention of crime and corruption. The law dean stressed that if the company had indeed agreed to the alleged demand of Commissioner Abalos for advance commissions from ZTE, the ZTE group would be charged for bribery in order to clinch the NBN contract.
The ZTE contract with the Philippine government is currently at the center of a political storm in the country. The most powerful and influential persons in Philippine politics are allegedly involved, headed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo, as well as top Cabinet and economic officials. Interest groups implicated and affected by the controversy have launched a campaign to counter the criticisms and repair the damage.
This is not the first time Chinese capitalists and investors in the Philippines have been implicated in scandals together with officials of the Arroyo administration. As an emerging economic giant, China's legacy to the world includes high crimes of corruption. Chinese society, which has been railroaded to become a major showcase of capitalism in Asia, is now being battered by headlines of corruption. This is true all over the world, involving Chinese companies, Chinese investors and scores of homegrown and international capitalists connected to the so-called emerging "global economic dragon" that is China today.
In August 2005 the University of the Philippines Law Center said the US$503 million contract between Northrail and the China National Machinery and Equipment Corp. Group was illegal because of "questionable terms" and should be annulled. It also urged the filing of criminal, civil and administrative charges against some public officials and private individuals. Former Senate President Franklin Drilon in 2005 even regarded the project as one of the most colossal corrupt deals undertaken by the Arroyo government in recent years.
The pattern of bribery and other acts of corruption undertaken by Chinese capitalists and investors have become part of the business mode in the Philippines as far as their dealings with equally corrupt local government officials and business partners is concerned.
Anti-corruption watchdogs in the Philippines believe that Chinese investors in order to win lucrative contracts with the present government are accommodating the corrupt deals and conditions presented or lobbied by Philippine officials during secret meetings and discreet talks.
As the Philippine Senate started its investigation into the ZTE deal, representatives of the Chinese Embassy in Manila, together with officials of Chinese business groups, paid a surprise visit to the Department of Transportation and Communications to discuss the status of the NBN project with Secretary Leandro Mendoza.
Anti-corruption activists said the visit of Liang Wentao, economic and commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy, Li Sa, deputy director of the Department of Asian Affairs, and officials from China's Ministry of Commerce led by Weng Shengwen and Wang Yinggi to resolve the problem involving ZTE Corp. was unethical and undiplomatic.
This move by Chinese officials prompted four of the country's biggest rural organizations to lodge a protest with the Chinese Embassy in Manila. The national fisherfolk alliance group Pamalakaya, the National Peasant Movement in the Philippines, the Amihan-National Federation of Peasant Women and the Union of Agricultural Workers on Tuesday filed a complaint to protest diplomatic officials' "illegal intervention" in the ZTE deal.
The four rural-based groups assailed the Department of Foreign Affairs for not doing its job to protect the public interest. They said they had taken the initiative to stop this agreement, which they collectively evaluated as checkered with corruption, scams and scandals.
The groups said it is now the turn of Chinese Embassy officials to back off from under-the-table talks set up by the Philippine government to settle the NBN project, and let owners of the ZTE Corp. face the consequences of dealing with the officials of the Arroyo government implicated in this onerous and graft-ridden deal.
Likewise, the four groups asked the Chinese Embassy in Manila to immediately recommend to their government the scrapping of 19 agricultural deals the Chinese government had signed with the Philippine government, to prevent NBN-like scams in the near future. The agreements, signed on Jan. 15-16, concern operations in fishing, farming, fruit-growing and the production of bio-ethanol, among others.
These agreements were lumped into a package of midnight deals signed without public consultations or public debate. They are expected to churn out bigger NBN-like deals because the president and her Chinese clients treat these agreements as best kept secrets, just like the ZTE broadband deal.
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is www.gerryalbertcorpuz.motime.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz.)
