He was in tears when he first surfaced in the Philippines’ national consciousness. It was 2 a.m. of Feb. 7, 2008 when Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada Jr. appeared in a hastily called press conference at the De La Salle Greenhills to reveal that he had been kidnapped at the airport upon his arrival from Hongkong by police officials, and that he believed persons close to Malacanang were behind his abduction.
Lozada also said that the abduction apparently had something to do with the information he had about the controversial $320-million NTN-ZTE broadband deal. Malacanang officials were said to have panicked and feared that Lozada would appear later that day before the Senate, which was investigating the contract.
Lozada told media men that police officials took him from the airport on Feb. 5, and drove him around Laguna and Libis, during which time he said he feared for his life. He was later brought to De la Salle Greenhills in Mandaluyong, where the sisters of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) and the La Salle Brothers protected him and his family for years.
Lozada, who was then consultant to the NEDA and a friend of then NEDA chief Romulo Neri, had been invited by the Senate to shed light on the severely overpriced broadband deal. Lozada was the NEDA consultant who was tasked to review the contract, which was allegedly brokered by then Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos and Mike Arroyo, the presidential husband. Lozada was sent to Hongkong with P500,000 shopping money apparently to evade the Senate investigation.
In his early morning press conference, Lozada gave out a handwritten outline, wherein he narrated the chronology of his involvement in the broadband project, and corroborated losing bidder and whistleblower Joey de Venecia III’s previous testimonies. He also named and recounted how former election chairman Benjamin Abalos and First Gentleman Mike Arroyo were involved in the project.
Later in the Senate, Lozada corroborated the prior testimony of Neri that Abalos had offered P200 million for the approval of the $330-million broadband project that was later canceled by President Gloria Arroyo. Lozada also testified that when Abalos had suspected a “double-cross,” He said Abalos threatened to have him killed should he show up at Wack Wack or Mandaluyong City. Lozada had insisted that Abalos was trying to protect his $130-million commission from the broadband deal.
Soon after, Lozada’s troubles began. He feared for his life and those of his wife and young children, and they all had to live within the confines of De Las Salle Greenhills, putting an end to normalcy in their lives. He could not work and his children could not live the way ordinary children lived.
He was charged with all kinds of crimes. Perjury charges were filed against him and his wife. The Ombudsman suddenly investigated malversation and graft cases against him. The malversation charge was in connection with the P19.6-million fund supposedly intended for the jathropa project of the Philippine Forest Corp. when Lozada was its president.
The graft case involved the allegedly anomalous purchase of motor vehicles, fencing materials and other equipment worth P15 million.
In his last press conference after charges against him were given credence by the court, Lozada was exasperated: “Our lives were disrupted completely. My only hope is that our sacrifices will not be in vain.”
It was obviously in vain as nobody has been convicted in the NBN-ZTE scandal after the Supreme Court dismissed all three petitions as being moot with the cancellation of the project by Arroyo.
Last week, Sandiganbayan convicted him and his brother Jose Orlando Lozada of conflict of interest and partiality for granting separate leasehold rights over public lands to his brother Jose Orlando Lozada and a private company when he headed the government-owned Philippine Forest Corp. They were sentenced to six to 10 years imprisonment.
After Lozada’s conviction, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) urged Congress to pass the Whistleblower Protection Act amid the administration’s intensified anticorruption campaign.
The proposed bill seeks to aid in the prosecution of corrupt and erring public officials and employees through the provision of protection and reward for whistle blowers. It proposes to create a Whistleblower Protection Council that shall evaluate the qualification of whistleblowers and administer the provision of benefits and protection for them. Rewards of up to P400,000 plus 10% of any amount recovered will be provided to whistle blowers. It also grants whistleblowers immunity from liability for disclosures made under this bill, which is gathering dust in Congress.
How many times have whistleblowers like Lozada gone through similar sacrifices only to end up with shattered lives or dead, while the perpetrators of the exposed deals continue to wallow in wealth and power? And what have their sacrifices gained? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because the people don’t seem to care, or are too numbed to do something about the abuses and injustices brought upon them.
Lozada’s case is certainly not the first time that ordinary people who found courage to expose anomalies in the government had suffered the consequences. The more prominent among them were Marlene Esperat, the 45-year-old journalist who was the first to expose the P720-million fertilizer scam, and Siche Bustamante-Gandinao, who boldly testified before the Alston Commission on the killing of her father-in-law, Dalmacio Gandinao, a member of the militant Misamis Oriental Farmers Association.
Esperat was shot on Maundy Thursday in 2005 while eating dinner with her 10-year-old son inside her house in Sultan Kudarat. It turned out later that high-ranking officials of the Department of Agriculture had tried to talk Esperat into withdrawing the charges she had filed against agriculture officials a few days before she was killed. The Esperat expose later turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg that was to be infamously known as the P760-million fertilizer scam, where hundreds of millions of government funds earmarked for fertilizer subsidies for farmers were allegedly diverted to Arroyo’s campaign funds.
Siche Gandencio, on the other hand, was shot dead in front of her family in Misamis Oriental in 2006, just a week after United Nations rapporteur Philip Alston had left Manila after completing an investigation of the unsolved political killings in the Philippines. Gandencio was one of the few relatives of political slay victims who testified before the Alston Commission.
And in 2007, Musa Dimasidsing, the courageous Maguindanao school district supervisor who exposed election anomalies in that same province that was prominently involved in the 2004 Hello Garci poll fraud, was murdered. Dimasidsing had revealed that gunmen filled up ballots or made teachers fill them up with names of Team Unity senatorial candidates while guns were pointed at them.
The bigger tragedy was that all these three people who chose courage over their personal safety and comfort died in vain! All their sacrifices went to naught as the perpetrators of the corruption and abuses that they dared expose remain free.
Lozada now faces the prospect of jail. And his life and those of his family will never be the same again. For many years, they have suffered through it all, but he never backtracked. He never gave up. It was the people – for whom he had offered his life and from whom he had expected support – who gave up on him.
