De Venecia to tell more on his privilege speech at the House

Ma. Lourdes “Miami” Ebilane
February 7, 2008
Story: De Venecia to tell more on his privilege speech at the House

Former House Speaker Jose de Venecia said in a press conference with FOCAP that he will deliver privilege speech on the coming days or weeks with regards to the issues that were raised when he delivered a speech before he was ousted as Speaker.

He also said that he spoke on those things because, “it went to a point that I reached the limit of my patience.”

De Venecia said the prime movers on his ouster as Speaker of the House are the Arroyos, the First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, Congressmen, Iggy Arroyo, Mickey Arroyo and Dato Arroyo. “It is her (president) family who ousted me,” de Venecia said.

He said he cannot blame the congressmen who voted for his ouster because of pressure from the Malacañang. “They are under pressure from the Malacanang, plus they were given pork barrel allocations for their projects which is very tempting plus major movements of cash.”

Public funds were used to approach the congressmen to vote for his ouster, according to de Venecia. When asked if this is illegal, he said, “definitely!”

But, he will not still be leaving the Lakas party which he co-founded with former President Fidel Ramos and former Dept. Foreign Affairs Raul Manglapus, “FVR say he is fully supporting me and even congratulated me.” He also added that if he will be expelled then it will means he is out of the party but he will not cross the bridge yet.

During his speech last Monday, he mentioned the Hello Garci and electoral fraud during the 2004 elections. He said a lot of people, both the opposition and civil society, are saying to him that the election returns at the House of Representatives has been tampered.

He said to the media on a press forum that upon learning that he asked Secretary General Roberto Nazareno and Sgt. of Arms to look on those, “because these are all rumors, the conclusions they gave me that there are no tampering with the premises of the House.”

Though he also said that the votes are for sale from Luzon to Mindanao.
De Venecia also said that he will go back with his previous notes before making any remarks. He also added that it will be related to president and Vice-President Elections.

But he appealed that he will tell everything at the proper forum. “I’d rather say everything at the proper forum or on my privilege speeches at the Congress, wherein whatever I will tell can be subject for investigation.”

The solution that he is seeing to stop the fraud during elections is for the voting to be computerized so that it will have an immediate result and to declare the winners straight away.
On ZTE controversy, he admitted that he asked his son, Joey de Venecia, not to make any testimony at the Senate with regards to the ZTE National Broadband deal. “My son told me, ‘will you allow $200M (overpriced) will be paid by the people?” With that remark from his son, he allowed Joey to testify at the Senate hearing.

“I am pushing for the B-O-T (Build-Operate-Transfer) instead of borrowing money,” De Venecia said. For him, that system would not incur massive debt to people.

But he also said he do not know how the deal was going on with the ZTE deal.

With Jun Lozada coming out saying that he knew something about the ZTE, “It makes sense on the testimony of my son Joey and to the speech that I delivered last Monday at the House of Congress,” the former Speaker said.

All that he is asking now is to give him more time to recollect everything and to wait for the time for him to make his privilege speech at the House of representatives where he will disclose what he knew. This includes, election cheating, government deals and even wrong doings at all government branch.

“It will be first hand and second hand information, so we have to be careful,” de Venecia added.

As of now, he feels that he is finally free, “free from stress and anxiety” as he described it.