GOD FORBID!: If it is not yet doing it, the government should insist on giving round-the-clock close-in security to Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr., a witness in the Senate inquiry into the botched National Broadband Network project.

And Lozada should not relax his guard and believe Sen. Ping Lacson's assurance that he has in the nuns and the La Salle brothers surrounding him the best security ever.

Imagine the upheaval that would ensue should anything untoward happen to Lozada! Anarchists and the opposition would benefit from such dire development, as Malacanang ends up as the prime suspect.

While charges against Lozada have not been filed and no hold order has been issued, Malacanang should openly help him and his family leave for a safer haven.

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HEARSAY: It is clear from the televised Senate inquiry that while Lozada may know some interesting details of the NBN project, he was not privy to the totality of the background negotiations.

This is understandable since he was not an insider or a key player. He was not a technical man of the NEDA or the DOTC with full access, but only a personal consultant of then NEDA Director-General Romulo Neri.

My impression is that most of what he knows was an accumulation from his closeness to Neri. No wonder a number of his statements are plain hearsay still needing documentary or collaborating evidence to gain full probative value.

But it must be said that he was led into making loose statements only on the prodding of some senators scrounging for information that they could use against the Arroyo administration.

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LEADING QUESTIONS: More discerning listeners, especially those with exposure to court proceedings, must have cringed every time a senator lured Lozada with leading questions and he innocently bit the bait.

Many times I was shouting “Huwag mong sagutin yan!” at the TV screen when some senators -- Jamby Madrigal, for instance -- laid an obviously biased premise and then shot a leading question to an unsuspecting Lozada.

I gnawed my fingernails as I watched some airport and police officers (not PNP Chief Sonny Razon whose deft tightrope performance was admirable) insisted on answering in halting English.

Worse, some senators -- including an ageing committee chairman -- did not have an idea of how to examine a witness properly. Later on in the show, the same questions were recycled by those whose turn came later but wanted to have their share of TV time.

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FLAWED INQUIRIES: Those are some of the many flaws of legislative inquiries. The rules are not as clear and as stringent as, say, the rules of court, and therefore not as fair.

As we keep saying, a Senate public trial in aid of legislation (?) is hardly the venue for determining the guilt or innocence of anybody accused of a wrongdoing.

Persons testifying before Senate committees do not know if they are guests, witnesses, resource persons, accused or stage props. If they fall into a trap when responding to tricky questions, their counsel, if any, cannot even object and protect them.

The sequencing of witnesses and interrogators is so arbitrary that many senators, dressed and coiffed for their TV appearance, have to jostle for an early cue.

The wait for their turn stretches on because some chairmen, whose procedural role is to preside and smooth out the edges, have the penchant for grabbing the limelight by inserting their own questions or comment out of turn.

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ADVANCES: The demands on Lozada to supply opposition senators with more ammunition against the Palace strained his limited supply of derogatory data.

For instance, when asked how much in advances had been paid by the ZTE contractors, he confessed that he did not know. But he ended up mumbling in agreement when the insistent interrogator kept mentioning figures.

Sources outside say that advances made have totaled at least $16 million:

* $1 million in August 2006 -- After a group went to China, dropped the name of the First Gentleman, and got an advance to facilitate project approval and “for PR.” (Organized media should protest the frequent use of alleged “PR” for big-time extortion.)

* $5 million in December 2006 -- Given in a China meeting with ZTE to fix the problem of Joey de Venecia coming in with his Build-Operate-Transfer proposal that Neri favored.

* $10 million in March 2007 -- After approval by the NEDA with a go-signal from Malacanang, the group met in Wack-Wack with ZTE officials and demanded another cash advance.

In all these alleged advance payments, a golfing crony of an influential constitutional official was reportedly booked as the recipient.

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OMBUDSMAN ASLEEP: The office of the Ombudsman should move faster. It should not wait for complaints to be filed, because it can initiate action motu proprio or on its own accord. (There are actually several complaints already filed with it.)

If only the Ombudsman and the Sandiganbayan (after a case is filed) did their job, there would not be any need for free-wheeling legislative committees to usurp that function of investigating, prosecuting and hearing criminal cases.

Congressional committees get away with their never-ending probes into government and other anomalies, because the Ombudsman is not doing its bounden duty spelled out in the Constitution.

The filing of the proper case(s) with the Sandiganbayan will knock out the excuse of the Senate committees in looking into the NBN deal.

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