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Bishop hits Palace 'maneuver' to avoid ZTE mess


A senior Catholic bishop on Saturday scored Malacañang's alleged "crisis management tactic" of diverting public attention from the $329.48-million National Broadband Network (NBN) scandal. Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez Jr said stories about the plot to kill President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the move to amend the 1987 Constitution could be among Palace's tactics to divert the attention of the public from the alleged anomalies in the government's NBN project with China's ZTE Corp. "That's very possible. Ang obserbasyon natin sa regime na ito at sa ibang panahon isa 'yan sa crisis management tactics, divert mo ang attention (That's very possible that the kill-Arroyo plot and the Charter change move were a diversion. We have observed this regime's habit of using crisis management tactics to divert attention)," Iñiguez, head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) public affairs office, said in an interview on dzXL radio. He also said that mass actions against the alleged overpricing of the aborted NBN project might already be a form of "communal action" that the CBCP had been calling for. "Kung ito pinag-usapan (If they talked about it and), there was a common discernment and decision, this is already part of that communal action," Iñiguez said. On Friday, militant and opposition groups gathered in Makati City to call for President Arroyo's ouster over the NBN-ZTE mess. Organizers said they were gearing up for more protest actions, including a mass for Rodolfo Lozada Jr on Sunday, and another rally on the anniversary of the first EDSA people power on February 25. Lozada is the key witness in the Senate inquiry into the allegedly anomalous NBN-ZTE deal that was linked to the President's husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, and Benjamin Abalos Sr, former chairman of the Commission on Elections. For his part, opposition senator Panfilo Lacson said the "ruse" involving the "kill-Arroyo" plot was obvious because security wasn't tightened for Mrs Arroyo, before the Palace bared the plot. "Wala tayong nakitang paghigpit ng security sa Pangulo (Until Malacañang claimed there was a threat to her life, we never noticed any measure indicating the tightening of security around her)," Lacson said in a radio interview. But Brig. Gen. Romeo Prestoza, head of the Presidential Security Group (PSG), continued to make the rounds of radio stations Saturday, insisting the threat to Mrs Arroyo was real. When asked in an interview on dzRH radio if the "threat" forced the PSG to make drastic changes to Mrs Arroyo's security preparations, he said, "Ganoon nga po (it appears that way)." "Binubusisi namin ang lugar na may posibilidad magkaroon ng ibang pangyayari. Ang tao pinatitibay ang focus. Pinapalawak ang ugnayan at capability for info gathering (We study closely the areas where attacks may be staged. We ordered our people to keep focused. And we have expanded our capability for information gathering)," he said. - GMANews.TV

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