‘Now Neri says Ms. Arroyo did what she had to do, and he now respects her decision, a decision clearly imbued with betrayal of public trust.’
FUNNY. I read in the papers that Romulo Neri, former head of the Congress Economic Planning office, then NEDA director-general, later Secretary of the Budget, and now SSS chief executive officer, declared that his President Arroyo is innocent of the allegations hurled against her at the height of the Senate investigations into the mercifully stopped NBN-ZTE deal.
"The President has to do what she has to do. I respect whatever decision she has done. I am professionally loyal to my boss", Neri said after filing bail before the Sandiganbayan. "When I reported the bribe attempt (of Ben Abalos, he earlier said), she told me not to accept." And that, to Romulo Neri now, means she is innocent.
Did his president investigate his accusation of bribe-offering from another public official, head of a constitutional body at that? More importantly, did the deal which Neri found too difficult to endorse because egregiously lopsided against the public interest, go through? Yes it did. In the wee hours of the morning, at a VIP lounge of the Hainan Airport in China, the deal between "her" government and ZTE of Shenzhen was signed, with her beaming proudly as witness.
When she got back to Manila that April morning, she rushed to the bedside of the husband who was in mortal danger of losing his life, despite which condition she rushed the night before to China, ostensibly because of an "important" conference to attend in Boao. Turns out the more significant thing was her rendezvous with ZTE officials at the Hainan airport where the "deed," the infamous deal called the NBN-ZTE broadband project, would be done.
Dutifully, her press office sent a press release to news desks that morning touting her singular achievement in that rush trip to China – to bring home the bacon, by way of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in the telecommunications industry, hastily like the "super" lady that she was, accomplished "like a thief in the night" (direct quote from Malacañang’s press release).
Now Romulo Neri says she did what she had to do, and he now respects her decision. A decision clearly imbued with betrayal of public trust. And he faces a stiff jail term, on top of perpetual public disgrace (as if what he has been through in the public eye is not yet the zenith of his disgrace), because finally, in the twilight of his president’s reign, she "allowed" the Ombudsman to charge him and Benjamin Abalos before the Sandiganbayan.
It was reported the other night on radio that Romulo Neri rued that he ever joined public service. He regrets having been there, done that, or not done that, and intimated that he should have just stayed put in staid academe, or the private business sector.
But to be fair, Romy wasn’t too bad as Neda director-general. He fulminated against the regulatory capture of the Philippine economy by certain moguls of industry. Shipping was in the hands of a presidential crony, which made the transport of farm products from Mindanao to Manila more expensive than from Mindanao to Japan. Port operations were also in the control of another presidential crony. Electric power, in all stages of generation, transmission and distribution, were in the hands of the same and more powerful friends and politico-economic confreres. Airline operations likewise. And telecommunications as well.
Because of this regulatory capture, as he eloquently and succinctly put it, the economy and its growth and proper development was hostaged by powerful interests. He went on the lecture circuit to rant and rail against oligopolistic status of the underlying fundamentals of business in the country. But when some of these same interests conspired with a greedy woman’s greedy man and used another greedy official to broker a deal that would have not only monopolized broadband technology, but also profit in an immensely and immoderately greedy manner, he pointed a finger only at the greedy broker but no one else. And so he now suffers the ignominy of being on the dock before the bar of "justice" as well as public opinion, along with the greedy man he accused of attempting to bribe him with 200 million smackeroos, just to grant nihil obstat as chair of the ICC in his capacity as head of the Neda. While the boss he remains faithful to, the boss who admonished him not to take the 200 million, but nonetheless approve the deal, is scot-free – at least for now. Or scot-free on this scandal because he clammed up then, and wants to clam up now. What a faithful servant!
Yet, in December of 2007, at a bistro along Benavides in Legaspi Village adjacent to the Asian Institute of Management, Romulo Neri opened bottles of wine for two senators, Ping Lacson and Jamby Madrigal, who both did not drink, Jun Lozada and his brother, another friend, plus Jamby’s Gary Jimenez and myself.
Again he described, with diagram and all, how the nation’s economy had been hostaged to vested interests. I heard that before, and wrote articles in support of his position against greedy monopolies in strategic industries, but this time he named names. Who was in charge of this, who profited from that, all of them linked to the transactional empire of his, well … boss woman.
When Lacson tried to pin him down to testify before the Senate, he hemmed and hawed, but he kept saying, as if to tell us he feared for the consequences of full disclosure before the elect of the people, "she is evil…she is evil".
Now the clock has turned full circle, or almost. Romulo Neri can now confront, nay --- has to confront the "demons" that bedevil his soul, the "demons" that made him hold back on telling all before an executive session of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee. For the regime that barred him from speaking the truth, by threats and pressure, later by executive fiat, is in the last dying hours of its long night of darkness. And the new order that beckons with the coming of dawn wants nothing but the truth.
In the next few months, Romulo Neri’s agony will heighten, and he will have to keep wrestling with his personal "demons", on whether to tell the nation and the world the naked truth behind his conversations with his president, this woman she described, and never denied he described, as "evil".
LITO BANAYO
MALAYA Column for Thursday, 24 June 2010
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