Noy wants own driver to avoid Lozada's fate

MANILA, Philippines - Something funny shouldn’t happen on the way to the inaugural.

At a dinner in his honor hosted Thursday by campaign supporters and volunteers at the Rockwell tent in Makati City, president-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III said he received a text joke warning him to make sure that the driver of the limousine that will take him and President Arroyo to the Quirino Grandstand on June 30 is someone he can trust. Traditionally, the incoming and outgoing presidents ride in the same limousine from Malacañang to the Quirino Grandstand for the inaugural.

“Otherwise, the joke goes, I may end up just like Jun Lozada,” quipped Aquino. Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, the whistle-blower in the ZTE broadband scandal, was driven around Metro Manila for hours from the Ninoy Aquino International airport by presumed government men. Lozada was among those in the Rockwell Tent dinner.

Hours before Lozada was scheduled to attend a Senate hearing on Jan. 30, 2008, he fled the country for Hong Kong, prompting the Senate to issue a warrant of arrest against him. He returned to the country on Feb. 5 and was alleged to have been picked up from the airport by government security agents, an act which Lozada later claimed was against his will. He claimed he was driven around Metro Manila, and all the way to Cavite, before finally being dropped off at the De La Salle Greenhills, where his family was frantically waiting for him.

He publicly resurfaced on Feb. 7, and in a hastily called pre-dawn press conference accused First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and former elections chairman Benjamin Abalos of involvement in the awarding of an anomalous contract to Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE Corp.

When Lozada was brought by the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms at around 4 a.m. to the Senate building in Pasay City following the press conference, Aquino was already at the Senate, the only lawmaker present at that ungodly hour. He had to drive there himself from his Times Street home, as he had given his driver and security staff the night off.

Aquino’s late mother former President Corazon Aquino was one of those who had expressed support for Lozada and his quest for the truth.

So far, most of those protecting the president-elect now were also part of his mother’s Presidential Security Group, including incoming PSG chief Col. Ramon Mateo Dizon.