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GMA AND AIDES ASSAILED OVER CONFLICTING STATEMENTS ON ZTE-NBN CONTRACT Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said the conflicting statements of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her Palace aides on the botched on National Broadband project have only served to reinforce the accusation that it is tainted with fraud which they are trying to cover up. Pimentel said the Palace is just deceiving the public by first denying media reports that the President admitted that she was told that the $329 million ZTE-National Broadband Network contract was flawed on the eve of its signing only to retract this statement later. “GMA’s contradictory statements prove the truism that lying is difficult to sustain,” he said. “She and her lackeys are now entangled in webs of deception. The more they lie, the more the noose of truth tightens around her neck.” The other day, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita acknowledged that the President, in a radio interview last Saturday used the word “anomaly” to describe the ZTE-NBN deal. This ran counter to a statement of Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye claiming that the President did not say that the deal was flawed. In her interview with station DZRH, the President volunteered the information that on the eve of her trip to Boao, Fujian, China on April 21, 2007, a person she did not identify informed her about the anomaly in the ZTE-NBN deal. But the President said she desisted from canceling the deal right away because she did not wish to offend China. “Kaya itong proyektong ito, oras na may pag-uusap na may anomalya, ay agad agad kong kinansela, agad agad na gumawa ako ng hakbang para kanselahin,” she said in the radio interview. Date: February 28, 2008 |
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