The roads, carved out of the rolling landscape by the sea, are so "scenic" that you do not know whether to worry about falling down the edge onto the sea or to look up for the ever present danger of landslides. On top of that, clashes between government forces and communist rebels occur regularly in the area.

Despite its handicaps, Pandan is lucky enough to have an Internet connection. The Local Government Unit Community e-Center (LGU-CeC) project team from the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) chose it as one of the 260 beneficiary sites. That is more than what most towns in the county can boast of and even some parts of Metro Manila. And now, the townsfolk of Pandan are looking forward to using the Internet services they were given not only to communicate with the rest of the world but also as a source of funding and grants.

Because of DOTC Assistant Secretary Cesar Sarmiento, two other Catanduanes towns have also been provided with a similar LGU CeC - Baras and Viga. Travel to these towns can also entail some difficulties. The project is definitely most helpful to these places, particularly Baras owing to its being billed as the "surfing capital" of the Philippines attracting tourists from far and wide. If it were up to the private telecommunications companies, these towns would probably be lucky to have their own Internet connection in the next five years but, thanks to the project, they are already "wired."

If it were up to these alone, it should have been a good week for the DOTC as it scored high marks for the LGU CeC project, which is now almost complete. But, in total contrast to the fiesta atmosphere in Catanduanes, things were more somber in the DOTC main office as still another witness has surfaced to reveal more anomalies in its already scrapped National Broadband Network (NBN) project, which also involves the Internet.

The powers that be left it to top agency officials to answer were busy maligning new NBN witness, resigned Philippine Forest Corp. president Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. and they certainly did a poor job at it since media and the public had a field day believing Lozada.

In fairness to the DOTC executives, they were not given an easy task even if Lozada himself went through rough sailing while being grilled by the Senate on the NBN. As expected, the pro-administration senators, the ones who have brains anyway, tried did their very best maligning Lozada. At the same time, squid tactics were coming from every quarter. One yarn even suggested that Lozada was not actually a consultant of former economic planning czar Romulo Neri on the project but a "broker," suggesting Lozada is in the same category as ex-poll chief Benjamin Abalos, who resigned in the wake of the scandal.

The DOTC's LGU-CeC project costs P123 million. The amount is miniscule compared to its aborted NBN project that nearly turned out to be a US$329-million fiasco. It did very well with a small ticket project and completely bungled a big ticket endeavor. That is exactly the kind of public service arithmetic that we can expect from the Strong Republic that is bent on feeding us crumbs and expects us to be happy with its idea of serving the Filipino people.