Senators hit NEDA refusal to produce NBN documents

A number of senators on Wednesday slammed the refusal of the National Economic Development Authority to produce documents related to the controversial multi-million National Broadband Network project.

NEDA officials, including socioeconomic chief Augusto Santos, invoked "executive privilege" in their defiance to a Senate subpoena to submit the documents containing the minutes of a meeting wherein its former head and now Commission on Higher Education (Ched) Chairman Romulo Neri supposedly rejected the NBN ZTE project's approval.

Senate Majority Leader Kiko Pangilinan said, "NEDA's refusal to submit official documents is totally unacceptable. It violates the constitutional right of the people to information and it impairs and undermines the Congressional power of investigation in aid of legislation under the constitution."

Pangilinan added, "If need be we will cite NEDA officials in contempt and have them arrested and detained until they comply."

Meanwhile, Senator Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. said, "The Blue Ribbon Committee should ask Mr. Santos once again to produce those papers. If he refuses without justifiable reasons to do so, he should be cited for contempt and compelled to appear before the committee to explain himself."

Pimentel further said that if Santos "If he cannot adequately do so, then he should be punished for his contumacious act and held in detention until he purges himself of the unjustifiable acts of defiance of the inherent power of the Blue Ribbon Committee power to compel the production of documents and the appearance of persons for purposes of its investigations."

Likewise, Senator Mar Roxas said the Senate would contest the NEDA's invocation of executive privilege.

"It seems like all of this is now a secret," Roxas lamented.  He added that the executive privilege cannot apply to everything that is being talked about.