MANILA, Philippines—Romulo Neri Thursday sat with one of his interrogators at the Senate as he presided over a meeting of the University of the Philippines’ Board of Regents on the UP campus in Diliman, Quezon City.

But before doing so, Neri, a former socioeconomic planning secretary and now chair of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), was met by an in-your-face protest action by a handful of UP faculty members and nonacademic personnel.

The UP employees waited for Neri on the steps of UP’s Quezon Hall and, as he alighted from his vehicle at about 9 a.m. and made his way into the building escorted by bodyguards, shouted and waved placards bearing slogans demanding that he tell the truth about the scandal-ridden National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp.

“No words were said about the Senate hearings, but one could feel the tension [at the meeting],” Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee that is leading the joint inquiry into the scuttled $329-million NBN-ZTE deal, later told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).

Neri heads the UP Board of Regents, the university’s top policymaking body, in his capacity as CHEd chair. Cayetano is a member of the board by virtue of his chairmanship of the Senate committee on education, arts and culture.

Also present at the meeting as a board member was Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar, who chairs the House committee on higher education. Villar is the wife of Senate President Manuel Villar.

Ice-breaker

Cayetano said the opportunity to ease the tension at the meeting arose when the board was deadlocked at 5-5 over the choice of dean of the UP College of Law, and a regent asked Neri if he had voted.

“The ice was broken only when I kidded him that it was his executive privilege not to reveal who he voted for,” Cayetano said.

“In turn, he said, ‘Thank you for being here.’ It was as if to say there was no personal issue between him and me in light of the Supreme Court decision,” the senator said.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court voted 9-6 to uphold Neri’s petition against the Senate that wanted him arrested for his refusal to answer questions on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s specific instructions on the NBN-ZTE deal after he had told her of an alleged bribe attempt by the purported broker, then Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos.

In refusing to answer three of the Senate’s questions at the hearing that lasted well into the night of Sept. 26, 2007, Neri invoked executive privilege—which the high court also upheld.

First time

Cayetano said it was the first time he had seen Neri since the budget hearings last December, when the latter faced the Senate committee on finance.

“The reason there was tension, I guess, is that while the Supreme Court upheld his case, he knows that it will not be good for the country,” Cayetano said.

The senator said there was no chance to exchange banter with Neri because he and Villar, his colleague in the Nacionalista Party, were seated at the other end of the long conference table. Villar, like her husband, has advocated full disclosure of the NBN-ZTE deal.

Cayetano said he knew Neri to be reform-minded: “He’s entirely against policy distortions and the weakening of institutions. I just don’t know what’s holding him back from telling the truth [about the NBN-ZTE deal],” the senator said.

Cayetano arrived at UP’s Quezon Hall later than Neri.

Asked by reporters what he would tell the CHEd chair, Cayetano said: “I will tell him, ‘Sometimes, you really have to think, not of what’s good for your President, or for your political stand, or for yourself. You know, many times, you have to put the country first.’

“[What Neri knows of the NBN-ZTE deal] will not only solve the political situation and the crisis of corruption that our country is in … [but also] send a strong message to public officials that the truth will eventually come out.”

But Cayetano apparently had no chance to relay his message.

Neri told the Inquirer late Thursday that he had a “friendly and productive” meeting with Cayetano, among other members of the UP Board of Regents.

On the steps of UP’s Quezon Hall, as university employees shouted anti-Arroyo slogans and waved placards in his face, Neri hailed the high court for its decision on Tuesday.

‘Rule of law’

“The Supreme Court really upheld the rule of law and respect for human rights,” he told reporters.

To the question of whether the decision had given him relief, Neri said: “I guess.”

Asked what he thought of the picket that greeted him, he said: “We always respect the people’s [freedom of] expression.”

But professors of the Philippines’ premier state university were not prepared to give Neri any relief.

Dr. Fidel Nemenzo of the UP Institute of Mathematics, when asked if they thought their repeated protest actions would compel Neri to quit the government and disclose what he knew of the NBN-ZTE scandal, said: “At least we let him know that here in UP, we teach students to tell the truth and that there is no place for him as our top official if he doesn’t do so.”

Asked to comment on the hostile reception for the chair of the Board of Regents, Dr. Noli Reyes, also of the mathematics institute, said it was the administration that was wanting.

“They are the ones who are boorish with the way they have been treating the people, with the corruption and the [extrajudicial killings],” Reyes told reporters after Neri had safely entered the building.

Resignation

UP faculty members, staff and students issued a statement demanding Neri’s resignation as chair of the UP Board of Regents.

Part of the statement read: “[The Supreme Court] decision, far from being a vindication of Romulo Neri, is but a further blot on his miserable and execrable record as one of the nation’s most mistrusted public ‘disservants.’

“Neri lacks all moral high ground and does not possess even the barest minimum of personal integrity necessary to lead an institution such as the University of the Philippines.”

The UP Diliman University Council had earlier issued statements calling on Ms Arroyo and Neri to quit their respective posts. With a report from Jerry Esplanada