Jun Lozada: Imperfect Hero

For the average Filipino who retires every night dead tired and hopeless, and again wakes up in the morning still tired and uncertain about every member of the family’s chances of eating three square meals a day — Jun Lozada may be some “singaw” who just popped out from nowhere, hogging the headlines of newspapers, television and radio. Killing oneself to earn a living, the ordinary Filipino, jaded from one “star witness” after another (who mostly turned out to be duds), would naturally be much more distant from the closer monitoring of current events and the closer scrutiny of governance that the more privileged sectors of society can otherwise afford to not be. And, as I’ve heard someone comment, “Who is this ‘mokong’ crying his eyes out on TV, spilling the beans on such a controversial government transaction and directly implicating some of the biggest, most intimidating names in the Arroyo administration involving billions of pesos in alleged kickback?” And at two or three in the morning of Feb. 7, people hardly believing their eyes and slapping themselves on the face to wake up made similar reactions to what they were seeing on TV,  “Whoa! Wow! Oh my God...!”

This is a big deal. Even the media has justifiable reason to make it the deserving banner that this issue has been the past week. Since the Arroyo administration in 2001, hope after EDSA 2 quite soon after, regressed to suspicion and skepticism. The President’s son, then an actor in the movies, Mikey Arroyo had stories of arrogant behavior swirling around him and with the First Gentleman Mike Arroyo already figuring in officially unverified stories of “big time transactions.” With many other big, medium and small controversies which continued to come up and persist in the next three years, the dam showed serious cracks with the “Hello, Garci” scandal after the 2004 Presidential elections — followed by the resignation of the Hyatt 10. The issues on jueteng, corruption, smuggling, diversion of funds, election irregularities and bribery were zarzuelas cast with the so-called “star witnesses” whose performances quickly demoted themselves to bit-player wannabes. (Remember Michael Ray Zuce, Sgt. Vidal Doble, Ador Mawanay, Odong Mahusay?) Of course, we had Joey de Venecia — who could otherwise be dismissed by naysayers as a disgruntled, sour-graping bidder to the deal and whose being son to then Speaker de Venecia does not at all help in the credibility department. We had Secretary Romy Neri  — who knew well we wanted the arm but he, instead, offered a finger. It now turns out that this is the first time — since Chavit Singson and his own dirtied hands — that someone who confessed to himself being part and privy to the “anomalous transactions” spilled the beans. And how.

I had the fortune of having a one-on-one interview with the man behind the headlines, Jun Lozada, last Sunday. Here was this frail but intelligent Filipino-Chinese who had played along until, as he says, he was himself asked to lie at the Senate and, then, decided to “do what is right” — at his own life’s risk, the risk on the safety of his family (five children), without much savings, uncertain about his future. Jun Lozada walks into the room in full “Binondo Chinese regalia” — like those loud micromanaging businessmen in T-shirts, puruntong shorts and rubber slippers often seen in the streets where they sell their wares. Jun was in long pants, though. He had an excuse to look less than the usually dapper middle-class engineer who had done well for himself in the private sector. He did tell me several times during the interview that he knows he is good at what he does. From how Jun sounded in the press conference, I, at once, knew he had enough between his ears and ba--s between his legs to tread dangerous waters, calculate his measured involvement in these shady deals and extract himself from it whatever the cost (except the safety of his family) — like abandoning the Mafia. I knew I had a good subject. 

I already heard him saying he was, in fact, playing along with “the script” handed to him by those who didn’t want him testifying at a Senate hearing on the ZTE Deal. I didn’t quite realize till our interview that, up to the last minute, after he was “abducted” and released and right before praying with the La Salle priests and nuns — Jun Lozada was, in fact, still part of the coverup. A recent interview with Reuters drove home the point in my head. Lozada was financed by his principals in a US$690/night suite at the Shangri-La in Hong Kong. Apparently, there was shopping money involved. Lozada was quoted, “I went to a Louie Vuitton shop, I went on a shopping spree. I spent like HK$30 to 40,000. I wanted to be tempted.” I wonder where this luxury bag is today.

I had to ask him, “How much did you benefit from past transactions?” The response was sketchy. He only bothered to repeat how he responded to Sen. Miriam Santiago’s accusation of conflict of interest when he took out insurance for himself from connections of his wife using Philippine Forest Corp. funds. Lozada’s blanket mea culpa (admission of  fault) temporarily absolves him from being the issue and, rather, makes him the prodigal son of civil society. And civil society has embraced him with open arms, deciding Lozada is no saint but is arguably one of the least guilty. Again, the truth, please — from anyone. “Korina, I have done well and more than any of my other siblings. Mahilig ako sa sasakyan, dati pa (I’ve liked cars since I was young). Even before I entered government I was already driving a BMW,” Jun said as if wanting to add, “please put that on record.” Lozada said he earned about four or five hundred thousand pesos a month in the private sector and was earning 50 thousand pesos a month in government. “Heroing,” apparently, requires a process similar to Vatican canonization. You have to disprove and survive all possible accusations against you. And there have been other talks. Alleged tracts of land that Lozada “leases to family and friends at irregular prices;” a 14-million peso condominium unit he bought and which he says was for friend Romy Neri — and which Neri does not want to comment on because “it’s a personal matter;” alleged laundering of Congressmen’s money and benefiting from smaller transactions invisible to the eye of a journalist with an appetite for the bigger stories.

But here’s this guy today whom a political analyst, an EDSA 1 hero and a member of the UP faculty, calls the face that represents the “force of light” — yes, like a Jedi in Star Wars — against the “dark forces.” Sr. Mary John of the “nuns against the tanks,” same from the 1986 Revolution, said, “Here now is a face, a personality with whom we can identify as good versus evil.” Black and White’s Enteng Romano agrees: “Filipinos are personality-oriented. As Cory was against Marcos, here is Jun Lozada against Gloria Arroyo.” He is an imperfect and reluctant living “hero.” To many, he is a hero nonetheless. These days, Filipinos aren’t very choosy. “We just want the truth out,” I hear it often. The jury may not all be back for this one just yet — but Lozada’s been holding out on his own just fine (1 vs. 100) the past two hearings at the Senate. And the web just keeps getting wider and stickier. “I kept telling myself and telling all of them, ang laki nito, ang daming sasabit talaga dito (this is a really big one, too many will be dragged into it).” He did not want to have to be the one to do it. But if the protest actions snowball into a climax, Jun Lozada’s name might be just alongside some of those who have streets and avenues named after them in the books of history.

“Oh my, I am the least likely to be called hero,” Jun quickly says. “Heroes are brave and strong and intelligent and stately. Look at me. I am scared and sickly, nakakalbo pa... (and my hair is thinning).” Yes, Jun Lozada is scared. He couldn’t get over it. He was narrating the story: When he figured the monkey business going on with the deal they were transacting — or with projects he simply knows about and gets to observe, he was scared to say anything. He played along. When Joey de Venecia came out, Jun got dead scared not wanting to be summoned by the Senate. He left for Hong Kong scared. He came back to Manila, scared. He was abducted (but according to government they were “just protecting him”) and he was terrified. He held the press conference shaking and crying. He says, “I wish someone were holding my hand when I was at the Senate.” And now, even under protective custody, he is constantly moving (“lugged around like a duffel bag”) and, at night, mortified at the thought that his future seems bleaker and bleaker as the days pass. “This,” Lozada says, “is exactly what I was scared of. I knew this would happen if I testified.” For now, this is Lozada’s reality. Life, as he and his family know it, has changed 180 degrees.

“Actually”, Jun Lozada says, “life as we know it hasn’t changed a mere 180 degrees — more like 360 degrees many times over.” This man of about 5 ft 8 inches, pale, frail and balding was someone who, indeed, does not look like your regular hero who’d inspire a countrywide upheaval. But “hero” this is what many have been calling him for about two weeks now — since his exposé on what he has so far described as one of the most blatantly anomalous transactions perpetrated by the most corrupt of Philippine government officials. This “hero” is scared and “in hiding” under protective custody at the Senate and, at times, at the La Salle Greenhills in Mandaluyong. Jun didn’t want it known he was at La Salle. No use for La Salle as a safe house anyway since Thursday afternoon, though, since four men whose faces were covered with bandanas installed a surveillance camera right in front of the school entrance. Government has denied it was set up by the police. The installers were quoted saying they usually install “for the Philippine National Police.” It is nothing new and we almost expect it, actually. The absence of logic, a web of disconnected statements and denials, denials — seems the order of the day. Jun Lozada survived the first audience with the Senators of the Blue Ribbon Committee. And while he had been willing to play along with “the script” just to avoid facing the Senate — almost at all cost — it was the prospect of having to lie in full national public view that marked the line. “The price I would have had to pay for my comfort and silence was my soul.”

At the height of the media frenzy when Jun arrived at the airport and suddenly disappeared, his Kuya Arthur said it squarely, “Kaming mga Lozada hindi kami basta-basta matitibag.” He was reacting to the press’ suspicion that his brother Jun was being brainwashed into going along with the script before he was to be released. Jun is the 11th child in a brood of 13 siblings. Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers are full-blooded Chinese who came to the Philippines straight from China and married full-blooded Filipinas. Both of Jun’s parents, then, are half Chinese — which also makes him half-Chinese. “They started with nothing. But I remember my father always saying, this country has been good to us so you better think up of some way to give back.” Jun’s father Rodolfo, Sr. left China on his own to go to the Philippines. “He is a grateful immigrant,” Jun said, “biro mo (can you imagine) all of us, except for one sibling in the province are professionals — three CPA’s, an economist, three engineers. My father so believed in the power of education.” For some reason, Jun’s father thought Jun special. “So why were you the lucky one to be your father’s anointed junior? After 10 children?” I was amused. “Everybody was wondering the same thing,” I noticed Jun’s charming, chinky eyes, with those endearing crow’s feet whenever he smiled, light up — like whenever any of us recounts a fond memory about our parents — “My father would tell me that he knew I would be the one to be ‘sikat’ (famous), like in the limelight somehow.” And so it is.

Under this particular spotlight, Lozada segues into talking about what he calls “the failure of the middle class.” “As I was witness to what was going on inside government, my stomach was churning.” It is, he said, “a mindset of arrogance” that the middle class — the educated, informed and aware — does nothing despite in-your-face corruption among the powers-that-be. “The middle class, we mostly care only to hold on to what we have. If only we all took the cue and, in unison, acted on what the likes of Dr. Jose Rizal already said and wrote about by the time the EDSA Revolution of 1986 opened the doors to the possibility of a New World Order — maybe we wouldn’t be in the rut we find ourselves in today.” He interpreted Rizal’s Condition of a Just Revolution. “There must be a grievous reason, and you must exhaust all peaceful means to resolve the situation. Second is you must prepare for imminent victory. Because if you act rashly or prematurely — even if you achieve your objective, you must have spilled more blood than what is necessary. The third is, once you have achieved your aim or victory, do not leave a single trace or remnant of the system you have fought against. Because the bad habits that were formed in the hearts and minds of people still remain. And those habits will simply nurture the remnants and allow it to grow in a more vicious form. That’s exactly what 1986 did to us. Changing government is easy. Establishing a new one is much more difficult.”

It is bittersweet for Lozada and his family, to say the least.  In a recent interview on our ANC show, Korina Today, representatives of every sector: the students, the academe, business, the legal community, the clergy, the opposition, civil society — they all had one thing to say: Yes we want reform. How we get there remains an opinion as many as there were groups out there on Ayala Avenue last Friday. Whether we even get there is a toss up between the hopeful whose number is formidably challenged by the jaded or uninvolved. Another political analyst predicted Jun Lozada’s place in history in the most pragmatic context: “History is written by the victors. If this upheaval is a success, then he is a hero. If his revelations lead to nothing much, he might even land in jail.” Meantime, Lozada refuses to surrender to the worst scenario. “Why should I leave this country even for my own safety? The thieves are out there having a grand time living in their mansions. Here I am in hiding, unable to hear Mass with my own family. Kung sino pa ang nagsasabi ng totoo, kami pa ang kawawa (Those who tell the truth are the ones in a pitiful situation). I am not rich, God knows I am not rich. I have five children and they’ve had to stop schooling for their safety. I don’t know what the future has in store for me and my family.” At this point, we again see tears welling in his eyes.

Unfortunately, what comes with the territory of the label is extreme sacrifice and suffering if not martyrdom. It is usually uncalculated — a title that is given and not acquired and, thereby, received whether one likes it or not — in fact, most of the time, posthumously. It is believable when Jun says he doesn’t want the label. But, like the situation now looking him straight in the eye, enveloping him and catching the country by storm, it is now beyond his control.

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(E-mail me at korina_abs@yahoo.com)