Mixed Media
A New Close-up on Power
By Sylvia L. Mayuga
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 01:52:00 02/10/2008
Filed Under: NBN deal, Government, Politics, People
However it happened, one must now ask: is it really only coincidence that a new morality play has become a smash hit, smack between EDSA II’s 7th anniversary in January and EDSA I’s 22nd anniversary at the end of February?
I refer, of course, to the psychodrama that began when the cyber engineer Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada tried to escape the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s summons to testify on the malodorous $329-M national broadband network (NBN) deal with the Chinese firm ZTE.
That committee hearing was scheduled on Jan.25 – five days after the anniversary of EDSA II, sidelined by the Palace in another tone-deaf departure from the Filipino nation’s dearest hopes.
Insult to injury, arrogant power was once more suppressing crucial testimony on the role of the First Gentleman, the former Comelec chairman and the President herself in another clandestine deal patently disadvantageous to the nation.
The NBN-ZTE contract was scuttled last September when its trail came uncomfortably close to Mrs. Arroyo’s desk, but that could not be the end of it. The point had already come across: whatever it was that had her sign it hastily in China remains a clear and present danger to the Filipino people. Not only were they not consulted, they were almost royally milked of more millions of pesos to preserve a crumbling status quo.
Lozada as the “man who knew too much” initially chose avoidance and flight from spilling more beans marked “NBN-ZTE” and “Malacañang.” Facilitated by government handlers, he fled on a trip to a putative destination (a London conference this time), while actually landing in Hong Kong where he cooled his heels for a week.
There he suffered a crisis of conscience that he self-diagnosed as worry for his family and future. Soon enough it goaded him back to Manila, still on government sponsorship, only to land in a life-threatening situation that inexorably changed his mind on who and what to trust, who and what really matters. Thus began a historical fast break with a deeply personal struggle detonating a major political explosion.
Certain main elements of that fast break were also present in both EDSAs, beginning with the main backdrop of peaking corruption and a government simultaneously losing sanity and credibility as unpredictability triggered new history far different from its Palace version. This time not even skillful media spin, such as we have known in an escalating series since “Hello, Garci,” has managed to fold, spindle and mutilate the truth
Lozada’s well-attended press conference – networked by the Daughters of Mary and the La Salle brothers, who gave him and his family sanctuary in La Salle Greenhills – became an unexpected turning point.
Notably, it began at 2:30 a.m. – between the hours of a religious community’s Holy Office called Vigil and Matins – with nuns, priests, bishops and the Christian brothers as silent witnesses to one man’s tearful agony of conscience, made public like never before. Its scenes in live telecast on ANC willy-nilly turned a press conference into high drama in a moving public confession. It sent shock waves through a city suddenly roused by what looked like a strange déjà vu of Cardinal Sin’s summons to Camp Crame in 1986 – history-making in full fettle.
Jun Lozada, man of the hour, was escorted to the Senate by nuns and priests in more people power redux the next morning. The following day, not only was he finally spilling the beans he had been at such pains to avoid spilling. Details of his testimony and the circumstances that provoked it would now sweep the nation back to deep reflection on, but far beyond, NBN-ZTE – to the reality of a moment for a people still prostrate under government corruption 22 years since EDSA I’s wholesale rejection of the Marcos regime.
Lozada’s insider testimony solicited all day on Feb.8 – on how government’s procurement system is compromised from Step One, from the bottom to the very top – was judged to be “worth billions” by Senator Jamby Madrigal. And the audience saw both competence and humility in its witness, with the added extra of self-deprecating humor and realism, humanized by loyalty to a friend, ex-NEDA chief Romulo Neri, who got this witness into the life-threatening mess in the first place.
In hot water, the man Mike Arroyo calls “J-Lo” revealed the best of the Pinoy: ready to confess to his own sins as he revealed the sins of others with a striking lack of self-righteousness. Would that the Arroyos and their cohorts had a whit of that moral courage! Would that church worthies themselves learn from Lozada’s lack of self-righteousness. As to the rest of us, we have much to remember with him – so long resigned to how low our nation has sunk that we cannot speak dangerous truth until brought to the brink of disaster.
More probing questions from Senators Pia Cayetano, Enrile and Honasan afforded close-ups on the sociology of Filipino corruption according to Jun Lozada who had internalized and “domesticated” it in his life. Here, in sum, are some portions of Blue Ribbon testimony, paraphrased in different parts of this website’s Running Account:
Enrile to Lozada: “You studied this project for five months. Why didn't you raise the alarm right away?” Lozada replies that all government projects operate that way, (making) a distinction between what falls under a "permissible zone" and what does not. He adds that "one or two percent" might be permissible.
***
Senator Pia Cayetano asks Lozada if his assignment was to reduce the "visibility" of the greed, in the context of Neri's instructions to him to "moderate" the "greed" of the various parties. Lozada agrees with Cayetano's interpretation.
***
(Questioned by Senator Gregorio Honasan, Lozada declares) that our institutions are crumbling. The dysfunctional procurement system is a sign of this… If there were someone trustworthy I could file complaints with, I would have done so, he says. He adds that that he feels sorry for many good people in government who have invested many years in the service but end up serving political appointees.
"I was gripped by that hearing all day," an old street parliamentarian friend confided at the end. It wasn’t just the who’s, how’s and what’s of the NBN-ZTE. It was the reality of corruption in the very fabric of our Filipino lives suddenly in glaring close-up, as a man laid his life on the line with conscience awakened because there remained no other choice.
Here, in an instance of victorious struggle over faulty flesh and all-too-human fear, new life emerges from the unscripted – in an individual citizen no less than a whole nation. Testimonials from some of the senators on Jun Lozada’s sincerity, warts notwithstanding, attest to this strange, unscripted power both within and above us all.
As new unpredictability unfolds from a deeply unjust status quo, what resounds is another call to wake and move together again as we have before. In this memorable time of year are more than dead and buried symbols of our nation’s historic glimpses of the possible. Our gut continues to tell us: we have not forgotten.
slmayuga@yahoo.com
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