NO REASON TO STOP SENATE PROBE OF BROADBAND DEAL DESPITE ENTRY OF OMBUDSMAN

Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today told Malacañang and its legislative lackeys to stop telling the Senate to discontinue its investigation into the national broadband controversy and to entrust this task instead to the Office of the Ombudsman which has already started its probe on the same case.

Pimentel said there is no reason to scuttle the Senate inquiry into the alleged anomalies surrounding the $329 million ZTE-NBN contract which constitute public, and not private crime, committed by people in government, and is therefore a matter of public interest.

"Let us not allow the Senate to be diverted from its investigative function just because another government agency is opening up an investigation into the same subject matter," he said.

"My suggestion is we go full steam forward and damn the torpedoes."

Ironically, Pimentel said that while the Senate is being dissuaded from pursuing its investigation, the Department of Justice has moved to conduct its own inquiry of the ZTE-NBN with the approval of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

"We are not preventing them from doing that. We are not bound by what other agencies are doing. For all we know, these agencies might be manipulated by forces beyond the control of the Senate," he said.

The senator from Mindanao expressed dismay that the Ombudsman sat on four complaints involving the ZTE-NBN deal filed by different personalities for more than five months and began to act on them only now after an administration official, Rodolfo Lozada, Jr., gave testimonies that are very damaging to the Arroyo administration.

He challenged the Ombudsman to conduct an impartial and no-nonsense investigation into the telecommunications deal and to erase the impression that it is beholden to the Palace.

"The Ombudsman has every right to investigate the matter and come out with its findings. The merits of the findings of the Ombudsman would depend on their rationality and impartiality," the opposition leader said.

In the same manner, Pimentel said the findings and recommendations of the Senate will have much weight if its inquiry is done in an objective and non-partisan manner.

"What is important is for the Senate to come out with findings that are credible, non-partisan and based on truth," he said.

Pimentel said if the Senate will recommend the criminal prosecution of people responsible for the anomalies in the NBN-ZTE deal, that will be acceptable only if this is based on truth and factual evidence.

Saying he believes that Lozada is telling the truth, Pimentel said he saw no indication that the witness had merely invented his testimony.

"As a matter of fact, if you have watched his testimony, you may have noticed that at certain points he was hesitant to speak because he may hurt certain people involved in the transaction," he said.