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Manila: A senior lawmaker has challenged the government's anti-graft body to look into the $329 million (Dh1.2 billion) ZTE telecoms agreement.
The move follows President Gloria Arroyo's admission that she signed the deal last year despite warnings from her advisers.
Senator Aquilino Pimentel Junior challenged the Ombudsman to conduct an impartial investigation into the deal and to erase the impression it is beholden to the presidential 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," Pimentel said.
He added 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 the truth," he said.
Prosecution
He added the Senate will recommend the criminal prosecution of those responsible for anomalies in the ZTE deal to establish a National Broadband Network (NBN).
In a much publicised admission, telecommunications engineer Rodolfo Lozada testified before the senate that certain officials of the Arroyo administration had been bribed into approving the ZTE proposal.
Pimentel said he saw no indication 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.
In an interview with radio station dzRH on Saturday, Arroyo admitted she had opted to approve the ZTE-NBN government-to-government deal last year despite receiving warnings from some of her advisers that the contract had been grossly overpriced.
However, she made the decision to review the project after learning there were some controversies surrounding it.
Arroyo said some officials had come to her the night before the contract was supposed to be signed but she had been hard pressed to approve the agreement in consideration of maintaining good relations with China, a key benefactor of major infrastructure projects.
"When I learned about the anomalies, I immediately talked with the Chinese President [Hu Jintao] to cancel the agreement," Arroyo said on Saturday.
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