JDV Redemption?

Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | February 5, 2008 at 11:11 pm


ON the verge of being ousted from his long-time post as Speaker of the House Monday night, Jose de Venecia had what critics would call a “sudden attack of conscience.”

In an hour-long privilege speech he almost was not allowed to deliver, de Venecia, like St. Paul in a blinding moment of enlightenment on the road to Damascus, began reciting a litany of allegations against the Arroyo administration, accusing Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the First Family of “bribery, corruption, abuse of power, and arrogance.”

“What is happening to our country?” decried the five-time Speaker. “Everything is for sale, bribery and corruption after bribery and corruption…Is this the Philippines that we want?”

Listen to excerpts of de Venecia’s privilege speech here and here.
For the first time, he also publicly corroborated son Jose ‘Joey’ de Venecia III’s testimony regarding the alleged irregularities and overpricing of the national broadband network project awarded to China’s ZTE Corporation. Malacañang, he said, had pushed for the approval of the anomalous deal that was later ordered scrapped by Arroyo.

“They insisted this so called ZTE project from China, which would cost you and me and the entire Filipino people an external indebtedness of $330 million, be approved,” claimed de Venecia.

Another big-ticket government project, the bidding for the National Transmission Corporation (TransCo), de Venecia revealed, was rigged so it would go to a “company that is closely affiliated to the Arroyos.”

“And they already provided the constructors in advance!” he said, pointing out that the country would have benefited more from the company of Salvador Zamora (brother of San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora) which was prepared to bid US$6 million for the government-owned and controlled corporation in charge of electrical transmission services to the power industry. The consortium of Monte Oro Grid Resources Corp., partly owned by Enrique Razon Jr., a businessman said to be close to the Arroyos, won the bidding last October with the highest declared offer of $3.95 billion.

It was Razon and First Gentleman Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo whom de Venecia also accused of orchestrating his ouster as House Speaker. Both implicated in the aborted broadband deal, Razon and Arroyo have denied de Venecia’s allegations.

De Venecia also lashed out at the way congressmen now have to beg the President — through sons Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo and Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado ‘Dato’ Arroyo Jr. — to get their share of the pork barrel.

“We have to beg the President of the Philippines for our own share of public works in order that we could build our irrigation system, some clinics and airports, and mass housing and little hospitals and medicines for our people. We have to beg the President of the Philippines and you have to go through his two sons to ask for your share of the pork barrel system.”

He even hinted at the “many attempts to tamper the elections in the year 2004″ but said he would speak on the matter in “greater detail in some other opportunity to rise in a call for personal and collective privilege.”

But as it turned out, de Venecia’s scathing and impassioned attacks on the First Family backfired on him, turning off his colleagues and Lakas party members. With 174 congressmen voting to declare the speakership vacant, he was eventually deposed as the fourth most powerful official of the country, a post he held for 12 years.

Yet even Arroyo critics in the opposition and civil society were not quick to embrace de Venecia’s apparent conversion. The initial reaction in certain anti-Arroyo circles is one of ambivalence as gleaned from the views of members of the Black and White Movement.

“All these things would have been really credible if he had spoken about them when they happened,” said Gerry Kaimo. “Instead, he is speaking out about all the crime and corruption only at a time when he is being targeted for replacement as Speaker of the House. When all the corruption was happening, he was quiet. Now that he is being forced out, he suddenly remembers all these crimes.”

Though rather belated, Leah Navarro nonetheless appreciates de Venecia’s “change of heart” and is encouraged by what the former Speaker said about spilling the beans on what he personally knows of alleged wrongdoing in the Arroyo government.

For groups like the leftist Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), the only way De Venecia can redeem himself is for him to “now make true his vow to expose the corruption and rottenness of the Arroyo regime,” said Renato Reyes, its secretary general.