Survival and loyalty

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor CEDELF P. TUPAS Sports Editor (On Leave) RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

In an another surprise twist to the already twisty saga of the scandalous NBN-ZTE deal, the President herself admitted last Saturday that she knew of irregularities in the deal even before the contract was signed yet could not immediately call it off because it would apparently put the Philippines and China in an embarrassing situation.

There was no explanation why it took her administration several months and a widely publicized Senate investigation before the project was finally cancelled.  There was no explanation why she allowed her men, holding positions of no less than Cabinet secretaries, to lie under oath as they defended the project which they steadfastly maintained was aboveboard.

After she admitted to knowing that the deal was flawed, she declared in a speech last Sunday that neither friend nor foe would be spared in the investigation and prosecution of those involved in the NBN scandal, all the while insisting that the First Family is not involved in anomalous deals.  This leaves her loyal men, the people who had risked their reputations to defend the deal, as well as their master, in a perilous lurch.  If the deal was flawed, and the President, who just publicly admitted that she knew of such, yet insists that her First Family was not involved, then whose heads will actually roll? 

Will this administration survive the growing public outrage by sacrificing its lieutenants whose blind loyalty and belief in the immense powers of their patron have led them to believe that they can lie under oath and get away with it?  Will erstwhile accomplices and collaborators be able to hold their tongues if faced with criminal charges and then seeing the people they have worked to protect enjoying not just freedom but the loot as well?  If the first family is truly involved and accountable, will haphazard webs of lies and deceit hold, or will the NBN scandal be the undoing of the Arroyo administration?*