By ELLEN TORDESILLAS
WHISTLEBLOWER Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada could be the perfect example of how, in this country, people like him who dare spill the beans on wrongdoing get punished, not rewarded. It is a practice that he said must change under the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.
Three years after he faced the Senate as star witness exposing the corruption-ridden contract for a national broadband network, Lozada still faces a slew of lawsuits while the people he has accused of making millions of pesos in commissions have mostly escaped sanctions.
“Masigasig sila sa kakahabol sa kaso ko, eh (They’re determined to pursue the cases against me),” said Lozada, who still faces a P19.5-million malversation case related to the jathropa project of the Philippine Forest Corp. which he used to head. He also faces a graft case allegedly for the anomalous purchase of motor vehicles, fencing materials and other equipment worth P15 million.
The cases were filed by the Ombudsman after Lozada testified in the Senate on the wheeling and dealing behind the $329.5-national broadband project entered into by the Arroyo government with the Chinese firm ZTE Corp.
Lawsuits are just one of the consequences that this year’s batch of whistleblowers—auditor Heidi Mendoza, Col. George Rabusa and Lt. Col. Antonio Lim—have to brace themselves for, Lozada said.
Even as he expressed solidarity with the three, he said, “Whatever drove them to do what they did, I’d like to remind them to hold firmly to it because they will be buffeted by storms of emotions, legal cases, physical threats and everything.”
He appealed to the families of the three whistleblowers to support them. “Once they have decided to carry the banner of truth, life would never be the same again for them,” he said.
“The Ombudsman has filed so many cases against me,” said Lozada, who is up against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.
Gutierrez is known to be a close friend of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel, whom Lozada has accused of having been bribed by ZTE so it could corner the project.
Gutierrez, however, faces the possibility of impeachment for allowing Ombudsman prosecutors to agree to a plea bargain that let Gen. Carlos Garcia, former Armed Forces of the Philippines comptroller, off the hook for plunder.
To further illustrate how skewed justice is in this country, Lozada said his former subordinate Erwin Santos who testified against him continues to be president of PhilForest.
“’Yun ‘yung tao ko na bumaligtad… For me, isa ’yan sa sukatan ko. That’s the fellow na ginamit nina Gloria, nina Atienza laban sa akin (He was the person who turned against me. That is one of my indicators. That’s the fellow Gloria Arroyo and then Environment Secretary Lito Atienza used against me),” he said.
Around this time in 2008, the nation was gripped by the live coverage of the Senate hearings on the NBN-ZTE scandal, much like the hearings on corruption in the AFP that now hold the nation in thrall.
Lozada was then the center of national attention, as he laid the blame on the doorstep of Malacañang, and pointed to the involvement of several government officials, foremost among them former Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos and former Economic Planning secretary Romulo Neri.
The threat to Lozada and his family forced him to seek refuge with the De La Salle brothers in Greenhills. They stayed there for two years and nine months until the Arroyos were out of Malacañang.
Lozada said he gets a sense of deja vu watching Mendoza, Rabusa and Lim during congressional hearings on the plea bargain agreement entered into by Garcia and the Ombudsman.
He understands the intense emotions that testifying and truth-telling stir up. “For a man to cry was taboo. When I was there, tears would just flow. Literally, you were being broken,” he said.
He said it was his faith that proved his anchor in those difficult times.
It is impossible for a whistleblower to return to the old life, but Lozada said he has a new-found compassion for others. One of the projects he is busy with is e-textbook. He is working with a number of schools in converting textbooks into electronic form to save schoolchildren from the burden of lugging several kilos of textbooks to school every day.
He is also into keeping schools safe by making sure that electrical connections are in order. “If there’s something that I cannot do, it is to be idle. I can be physically limited but it doesn’t mean my mind will stop. My mind continues to create new things,” he said.
Many were expecting that with Aquino now in Malacañang, Lozada would rejoin government. “I have never been offered a position,” he said.
Looking as an outsider, Lozada said he has not seen much action in terms of fighting corruption. “I was expecting a very big war against corruption. Programs that would curb corruption and appointment of people well beyond corrupt practices,” Lozada said.
Borrowing from a famous prayer asking for serenity to accept things that one cannot change, the courage to change things that one is in a position to change and the wisdom to know the difference, Lozada said, “I have learned to accept things that are within my circle of influence and things that are outside my sphere of influence.”
Lozada said he sees the decision of Mendoza, Rabusa and Lim to come out and tell the public what they know despite great risks as “a march of truth against the darkness of corruption. Sana marami pa ang maki-martsa sa amin (I hope that more will join us).”
Below are excerpts from Ellen Tordesillas’ interview with Jun Lozada, taken by VERA Files’ photojournalist Mario Ignacio.