Moderate grid Says Rodolfo Jun Lozada

Jun, you moderate their greed."

This order from former socioeconomic planning secretary Romulo Neri to then-technical consultant Rodolfo "Jun Lozada Jr. poses questions on who among the personalities involved in the scrapped national broadband network (NBN) project may have wittingly or unwittingly dipped his hands into the mess.Lozada’s recollection of Neri's statement, delivered at Thursday’s press briefing at the La Salle Greenhills high school in Mandaluyong City, showed that even the government officials involved in the planning stage of the controversial project were aware and "tolerated" the alleged anomalies.The list of characters include former elections chief Benjamin Abalos Sr., businessman Joey de Venecia III, Neri, First Gentleman Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo and even Lozada himself."So I told the Secretary about it, si Secretary Neri and his instruction to me was very clear. He said, 'Jun, you moderate their greed.' I was naive to accept that order," Lozada said, referring to its cause -- Abalos's proposal to have a $130-million commission out of the original $262-million project.Lozada's statement corroborated de Venecia’s claim that Abalos and Mr. Arroyo were involved in brokering the multi-million dollar contract that ballooned to $329 million.He said that at that time, Abalos was already worried about losing his commission.Neri, however, said Lozada must have misinterpreted his instructions. "I must have used colorful language. When I say that it means ‘look for ways to reduce the project cost' which is really part of our normal job at NEDA (National Economic and Development Authority)."Loan or no loanLozada said his troubles started when he, following instructions from Neri and supposedly from President Arroyo, insisted that project be implemented through BOT (build-operate-transfer) and not through a loan package separate from the CyberEducation project.This reportedly displeased Abalos who called up Mr. Arroyo to inform him of the consultant's reluctance to secure a loan for the project.Lozada said it was Abalos himself who claimed that he was talking to Mr. Arroyo. Lozada, however, admitted he did not hear the voice on the other end."But the following day, true enough a letter from the Chinese ambassador came. If you can check I think sometime in December, a letter addressed to the government came in from the Chinese ambassador saying that there is now money available for loan for the NBN project independent of the CyberEducation project," Lozada said."It’s because the loan for CyberEd has been agreed on already. So now, there’s another loan.""This project for me is just one transactional example of a dysfunctional government procurement, like a systemic dysfunction of how we procure projects," an emotional Lozada said at the briefing.""There are others that have escaped scrutiny, but the system is the same," Lozada said.Lozada was ordered to appear before the Senate last week to testify on the deal with NBN contractor ZTE Corp., but first left for Hong Kong and then was picked up by armed men at the airport when he returned on Tuesday night.Lozada resurfaced in the early hours of Thursday morning at a news conference, saying that he was in the custody of policemen since his return on Tuesday.He then backed up allegations, previously aired by other witnesses in a Senate inquiry, implicating Abalos in a multi-million dollar kickbacks scandal over the deal with ZTE to supply a broadband network to link government agencies.The name of Mr. Arroyo, the President's husband and a golfing buddy of Abalos, also cropped up in his statement.Mr. Arroyo and Abalos denied any wrongdoing.