Confident of her unsullied integrity, President Arroyo is ready to face any attempts to impeach her over alleged involvement in the briberytainted broadband deal, Malacañang said Wednesday.

As this developed, some senators as well as religious groups assailed the inclusion of witnesses who blew the whistle on the alleged anomalies in the $329-million government broadband project in the list of those recommended to be charged with graft and corruption.

Deputy Presidential Spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said the President neither violated the law nor was remiss in her obligations in dealing with the alleged irregularities involving public officials in the broadband project.

Any impeachment attempt of the President, however, may not be good idea at this time, especially since nation has other pressing issues, including the rehabilitation of typhoon-hit provinces and preparations for the 2010 elections, according to Fajardo.

“If there is another impeachment attempt against the President, we will be ready for that but at the same time we have very few months left. This month will be the filing of candidacies. We are still in a state of calamity in Luzon. We have many pressing issues rather than focus on impeaching the President,” she said in a news conference in the Palace.

Fajardo made the remarks a day after the Senate Blue Ribbon report recommended the filing of charges against President Arroyo and 10 others in connection with kickbacks in the broadband project. The report noted the President failed to stop the alleged anomalies in the telecoms deal with a Chinese firm.

Fajardo, however, rejected the findings of the Senate report, saying it did not present evidence to show the President violated the law. She said the President cancelled the telecoms deal despite an earlier probe that failed to get “conclusive” evidence against the public officials implicated in the project.

But the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) said it will conduct another investigation into the alleged participation of President Arroyo and her husband Miguel in the aborted multi-billion-peso National Broadband Network- ZTE broadband deal.

Assistant Ombudsman Jose de Jesus said the inquiry will commence as soon as the anti-graft body receives the Senate report on the results of its probe into the US$329-million deal to connect all government offices nationwide via the Internet..

Fajardo said she hopes the Senate Blue Ribbon report will bring to an end to the broadband scandal that erupted a few years ago. “We have already exerted so many effort and time in this issue,” she said.

First Gentleman’s lawyer, Ruy Rondain, expressed confidence the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee report will not in any way influence the Office of Ombdusman to reverse its August 27 resolution dismissing the criminal charges against the First Couple.

House Deputy Speaker for Mindanao Simeon Datumanong said there is no way President Arroyo will be impeached in connection with the deal.

Datumanong said the House of Representatives has already exonerated the Chief Executive of any liability over the signing of the NBN-ZTE contract when it dismissed the fourth impeachment case against her last year.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde, for his part, said the President, who returned to her home province Pampanga amid the latest political turmoil rocking her presidency, “is being made a scapegoat as well as a pawn for a political agenda”.

“We hope that the final report of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on the ZTE issue will not end up being exploited for the cynical and oppositionist agenda of others,” Remonde said.

Remonde highlighted three aspects of the Senate report in trying to dispute the alleged culpability of the President in the aborted telecoms deal with a Chinese company.

First, he said the Senate report sought to implicate everyone who was linked to this issue "presumably in order to initiate a comprehensive adjudication by the appropriate government body."

“No one is let off the hook. Evidently the committee intended to reserve the proper exercise of due process to another adjudicating body, perhaps rightly so. This, however, makes us wish that a little more careful legal thinking could have gone into the report," he said.

Second, Remonde said while almost everyone was accused of violating the law, the President herself was not implicated in any specific violation. “There is simply one statement –‘The President has lots to answer for’ – behind which can be found no specific accusations, let alone any attempts at evidence,” he said.

Third, Remonde said the only issue raised against Mrs. Arroyo concerns her immunity from suit.

“And on this, it is not the President who is implicated but the Ombudsman allegedly for not discharging its duty to investigate impeachable officers. The complaint by the Committee boils down to a tug of war between the Ombudsman – an independent constitutional body – and the House over their relative balance of authority in various stages of an impeachment process. This is a dispute in which the President should not even be mentioned by the report,” he said.

On the Senate report about her alleged failure to perform her duty, Remonde said: “Again, no examples are cited nor evidence proffered for any shortcomings in Presidential performance, let alone any wrongdoing.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who sponsored the resolution that triggered a Senate investigation of the government’s broadband deal with China’s ZTE Corp., said it is inappropriate for the committee to include in its recommendation the son of the former House Speaker Jose “Joey” De Venecia III of Amsterdam Holdings, Inc. and Engineer Noel Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada Jr. as one of the personalities that should be persecuted before the Ombudsman.

The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon, also recommended the filing of charges against First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, former House Speaker Jose De Venecia, Jr. Former Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos, Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) Secretary Leandro Mendoza, Assistant Secretaries Elmer Soneja and Lorenzo Formoso, and Former National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Romulo Neri, Deputy Executive Secretary Manuel Huberto Gaite, and Environment Secretary Jose “Lito” Atienza, Jr.

Lacson said such moves would discourage future whistleblowers from testifying on high-profile government cases. Instead of deterring wrongdoing, the Senate panel’s report would intimidate future whistleblowers from exposing anomalies in government.

“I don’t think Jun (Lozada) and Joey (De Venecia) should be included. They both did a heroic act and we might be discouraging whistleblowers if they are included,” Sen. Francis Escudero, for his part, also said.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the recommendation for the impeachment of Mrs. Arroyo is “too little and too late.”

“It appears that even the allies of the President in the Senate have seen the light of day and have found PGMA (Mrs. Arroyo’s initial) to have seen the light of day and have (her) to have been wanting in the manner she conducted herself as chief executor of the laws in the NBN-ZTE deal,” Pangilinan said.

In a paper expressing his dissent, Sen. Joker Arroyo also questioned several aspects of the committee’s investigation, in particular, its failure to compel the presence of officials of ZTE Corp. and ARESCOM, an American company and an interested bidder in the project.

Likewise, the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) slammed the Senate Blue Ribbon report that included Lozada among those personalities recommended to be charged.

“It is outrageous! It is unacceptable! It is unbelievable! It is something that cannot be understood by logical thinking people… and we are maddened by this!” AMRSP Chairperson Sr. Mary John Mananzan said.

She said the report of Sen. Richard Gordon’s committee should not have included Lozada because the person risked his own life and livelihood for the sake of truth. (Genalyn Kabiling, Hannah L. Torregoza, Leslie Ann G. Aquino, Jun Ramirez, Charissa M. Luci, Edmer F. Panesa, and Mario B. Casayuran)