BY DENNIS GADIL

ROMULO Neri "agonized" over resigning as planning secretary after President Arroyo gave the go-signal to approve the $329 million broadband contract with China’s ZTE Corp., ZTE witness Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. told the Senate yesterday.

Lozada recalled that Neri also told him that President Arroyo has "lost all moral authority" over him after he was told by the President to just approve the project despite the P200 million bribe offer of then Elections chair Benjamin Abalos Sr.

Lozada said Neri told him that the President just shrugged off the potential threat of Jose "Joey" de Venecia III’s group leaking the alleged anomalies of the contract to the media.

"Sinabi daw ni Presidente ‘pakulo lang ni Joey ‘yan and his father,’" Lozada said quoting Neri.

Lozada said the President told Neri to cure the defects of the contracts and do everything so that the project would get funding from China.

Lozada said Neri confided all these to him in phone conversations or through exchanges of text message.

He said Neri confided the information to "many others."

He said he was not able to keep all the text messages that he received from Neri.

"But I have no reason to doubt. Ba’t naman sya magsisinungaling sa akin?" Lozada said.

Lozada declined to be placed under the government’s witness protection program. He said he would rather be under the care of his friends in the military.

When asked if he would also choose the Senate or Congress as sanctuary, Lozada said: "Opo."

Majority leader Francis Pangilinan said he wants the witness protection law amended to allow the Senate and Congress to also administer protection to its own witnesses.

On questioning by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, Lozada said important papers might have been taken by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from his Philippine Forest Corp. office in Taguig City.

"Naghahanap po sila ng gagamitin sa akin," Lozada said, noting the raiding team did not have a search warrant.

Lozada also clarified that it was Anthony "Tony" Abaya, a political and communication consultant identified with former President Fidel Ramos, who invited him to go to the house of Sen. Joker Arroyo and not the senator’s wife, Fely Arroyo, sometime in September 2007.

He confirmed the contents of the two-page letter sent by Abaya to the Blue Ribbon committee dated Feb. 18, 2008 asserting that it was he and not Fely Arroyo who initiated the meeting.

Abaya in his letter also said Mrs. Arroyo "neither prompted nor suggested to Jun that he should not testify."

Neri, in a press conference in Malacañang, denied that "anything criminal" or even "impeachable" was discussed in his conversations with President Arroyo relating to the national broadband network project.

Neri said what they discussed was the reason he invoked executive privilege during his appearance in the Senate last year.

He said what he could share is that the President told him not to accept a supposed bribe from Abalos.

"There is no but. She just told me, ‘do not accept it.’ Beyond that I cannot say anymore. Wala yung but. There’s no such thing."

Neri dismissed a supposed affidavit of Lozada that circulated in the Internet, which talked about Neri’s reluctance to attend the hearings because he might say something that could lead to a "regime change."

He said while he finds the supposed affidavit to be "a very interesting piece on the political economy," he is uncertain if Lozada wrote it.

"I know Jun’s style. He has a somewhat different style of writing. It sounds more like it was written by a professional writer like one of you… I mean people with excellent (writing skills), good journalists," he added. – With Jocelyn Montemayor