No martyr, Neri is now P206 M richer

Sympathy at first piled on when economic secretary Romy Neri was charged in the $329-million ZTE scam. Friends pleaded that he finally bare all he knows about the $200-million (P10-billion) attempted kickback in the national broadband network. It’s the only way to not be lumped together with ex-Comelec chief Ben Abalos, whom prosecutors tag as principal in the useless but overpriced project.

Pity turned to scorn with Neri’s response, though. For, cowardly he said, “I won’t be a martyr like my high school classmate Edgar Jopson.” What he meant was that he’ll keep the story of high crime to himself. That’s so he won’t end up killed like the freedom fighter Jopson.

A moderate student activist of the ’70s, Jopson during a Malacañang run-in was demeaned by Ferdinand Marcos as mere “son of a grocer.” Radicalized by Marcos’s martial law, he joined the underground resistance and was killed by soldiers in 1982, at age 34. Reportedly torturers tried to extract from the wounded Jopson information on his comrades’ hideouts. Refusing to talk, he was shoved into a pit and buried alive. He is among democracy’s martyrs honored at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani.

By contrast, observers now wonder how Neri, who sneers at heroes, ever got ensconced in high position. He possesses not the traits of a leader. The Constitution requires public officers “to be at all times accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.” High officials expectedly are a cut above the rest in putting national interest over self. They should know life, that we all will pass this way but once and so must live to the full as men for others. They must be imbued with vision, including sense of legacy, like the sacrifice of Ninoy and steadfastness of Cory Aquino that in part led Filipinos to install their son Noynoy President by the widest vote margin ever.

Neri prefers to be remembered differently. On national media and official record he boldly accused Abalos of offering him P200-million bribe to endorse NBN-ZTE. Then he gutlessly clammed up about what Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did about the crime, claiming executive privilege. Whistle-blowers Joey de Venecia and Jun Lozada testified that he nearly resigned when forced by the President to delist soldiers’ housing and Angat Dam rehab from China-funded projects, in order to promote NBN-ZTE. Neri only said, “No comment.” Armed men shot up his house in broad daylight. All the more he slunk into silence, ignoring that spilling the beans would make the NBN-ZTE crooks the obvious culprits if anything happens to him.

Does anyone recall that Neri was once upon a time brilliant with economic treatises? Hardly. But at the Social Security System to where Arroyo demoted him upon outliving his usefulness as NBN-ZTE fall guy, Neri provides three more ways to recollect him by:

• As President-CEO he lent P1 billion to the nearly bankrupt postal service to set up withdrawal stations nationwide for overseas workers’ remittances. In the very competitive field, it’s a risky investment of the provident fund of 27 million private employees and retirees. But then, Neri treats the SSS’ P250-billion asset like it’s his own.

 • Although suspended by the Ombudsman, Neri still goes to the SSS office. He is sneaking the board’s midnight appointment of his nephew to the newly created permanent position of Deputy President-CEO. Antonio Neri Echevarria Jr., presently special assistant to President-CEO, is co-terminus with Neri on June 30. Neri had hired him in 2008 as consultant but with the rank of executive vice president, and in breach of the Civil Service Code gave him line management duties. Among these was the P1.6-billion unified ID system with other provident funds. Echevarria has grown so in love with the post that he wants to stay on. Chairman Thelmo Cunanan endorsed Echevarria to the Arroyo-appointed trustees last May 25, during the election ban on hiring. They are set to appoint the outsider on June 28.

• Neri in 2009 reportedly brought home P206 million in director’s bonus from Philex Corp., in which SSS has stocks. The bonus was share of the mining board’s 1.5-percent cut of before-tax income. It is separate from the P120 million director’s fees and perks that Neri reportedly collected in the same year. Separate too from the bonus and fees in 2008, when he first sat in Philex’s board. Neri has never denied the news items, SSS managers say. Strictly speaking SSS reps in private firms must turn over the bonuses and fees to the fund, and be content with a modest stipend. For, the money is part of SSS earnings in stock investments. Not with Neri.

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“He whose comfort comes from within has a built-in source of strength.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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