POLITICOS: Many friends, most of them middle class, are hesitant to embrace Senate witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr. as a hero or at least as the unsullied repository of the truth in the aborted National Broadband Network project -- because of the politicians around him.

The general impression is that Lozada is telling the truth, or at least his view or version of that part of the whole truth about the NBN deal.

But they hold back as they see Lozada in rallies and other public activities in the company of opposition politicians who had managed to get near him despite the layers of religious brothers and nuns surrounding him.

You have seen these politicians, including one pushing for a competing Build-Operate-Transfer bid, in the rally and group pictures of Lozada in the newspapers and on TV.

His identification with the opposition and oppositionist groups is not fair to Lozada and to the entire nation searching for truth.

* * *

TAILOR-MADE: Mentioning “systemic dysfunction” in his Senate testimony last week, Lozada said that government procurement is sponsor-driven and not based on the requirements of the end-user.

The specifications or the bidding terms of reference (ToR) are often tailor-made to suit the offer and the capability of the pre-selected bidder or his sponsor. This ensures that the favored supplier wins the contract.

If complaining local IT (information technology) companies are to be believed, such a “dysfunction” has been spotted again in the Commission on Elections as it prepares for the Aug. 11 polls in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

They complain that the ToR for the bidding for hardware, software and services for the ARMM elections have been tailor-made for foreign suppliers to the exclusion of local IT companies.

* * *

DISCRIMINATION: In a request for proposals released recently, the Comelec invited bidders for P867-million worth of automation equipment for the voting, ballot counting, result transmission and canvassing of the ARMM polls.

Local IT firms point to Item A-13 of the bid document saying that the electronic voting system and the automated counting system of a bidder “should have already been successfully used and proved secure, accurate and reliable in an actual public political election where it was last used, with a written certification to that fact from the election authority of the client county/state/province.”

But no local firm has ever used its system in a political election, here or abroad. Interested Filipino firms plead that their innovations and inventions are thus excluded although they are suited for the peculiar needs of Philippine elections.

They complain that the ToR “favor foreign-based manufacturers and suppliers whose electronic voting and automated counting systems have been used in political elections in other countries, but never in the Philippines.”

With due respect, I think this provision must be removed for locally developed systems, but retained for those that are foreign-sourced. Filipino developers must be helped and protected, instead of discriminated against in their own country.

* * *

OTHER SYSTEMS: If any country adopted a bidding term similar to Item A-13, no new system would ever be introduced, especially one developed in that country.

When the punched card system was introduced in the US, how could it have been adopted if the Americans had a procurement provision similar to that of that ToR item of the Comelec?

What about the counting machines used in the ARMM last time? They were reportedly used in a previous election, but that did not ensure that they would work. (They did not.)

Remember the South Korean system that Comelec bought last time only to have the contract invalidated by the Supreme Court? If the Koreans had imposed such a rule on their developers, they would never have been able to develop a system comparable to that of the Americans.

What about the Indian handheld device? If India had a term like Item A-13, they would never have adopted that device. Instead, they developed a system suited for their needs and came up with their own homegrown election system.

* * *

PROCUREMENT: Sen. Mar Roxas, chairman of one of the three committees in the joint hearing, said Lozada's testimony has stressed the need to reform the government's rotten procurement system.

“Iyan naman ang dapat i-focus ng Senado, kung papaano natin aayusin ang procurement ng ating bansa, para ang pera natin ay hindi naman masayang,” Roxas said. “Inuutang natin ito, kinokolekta sa buwis ang pambayad nito, kaya dapat namang mapunta ito sa tama na mga proyekto na priority natin.”

The senator pointed out that the Senate must now get the testimony of former National Economic and Development Authority Director General Romulo Neri “to say exactly what he knows, in the interest of the truth and public interest.”

“Secretary Neri has sought refuge from the courts, and this is why we in the Senate are very aggressively pursuing this case, for the Supreme Court to order him to come here and say exactly what he knows,” he said.

Addressing Neri, Roxas said: “Romy, ikaw ang nakakaalam nito. You can set the nation free by telling us what you know about this. Come, and do your job here.”

He said the crux of the controversy is how the policy on the NBN project changed overnight -- from a BOT arrangement with the private sector to borrowing $330 million to finance it -- and the crucial role that NEDA played.

* * *