I read this from the Inquirer today. So they are spying on kulasa grounds too. I can just imagine that device in Gate 1. And Ms. Manila, i remember vividly in P.E. class with her whistle on her neck and that all-too-familiar gruff voice. And the students screaming upon seeing Lozada -- that could well be us too, years ago. Scary to think how closer and closer to home Evil has creeped into our collective lives. When will it end?
Big Brother also snooping on ‘Jedi’ at St. Scholastica
MANILA, Philippines -- Wherever the “Jedi” goes, Big Brother’s linemen seem to follow.
Officials of St. Scholastica’s College (SSC) in Manila discovered what they suspected to be either a spy camera or a bugging device installed near the main gate of the campus the night before they were to hold a forum with NBN whistle-blower Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr.
The device was found perched behind an outdoor tarpaulin ad for the “Mamang Pulis” campaign of the Philippine National Police. It had been placed on top of an electrical utility box fixed to a concrete post near SSC Gate 1 on Leon Guinto Street, Malate.
SSC is the second school to have a suspicious gadget suddenly installed near its premises at about the same time it was hosting Lozada, the former government consultant who exposed alleged anomalies behind the cancelled $329-million National Broadband Network contract.
‘Mamang pulis’
Last week, the PNP installed a surveillance camera in front of Gate 4B of La Salle Green Hills in Mandaluyong City, but insisted it was to monitor traffic conditions on Ortigas Avenue -- not the movement of Lozada’s protectors and supporters based at the school.
SSC security guards first spotted the device at around 10 p.m. Wednesday, according to safety and security officer Vivian Manila.
About five hours earlier, a nun at the Catholic school saw uniformed policemen putting up the “Mamang Pulis” streamer on the same post, Manila told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).
“This morning, we requested our IT (information technology expert) to see up close what kind of gadget it was,” Manila said. “It was positive. It’s something used as a camera or used to monitor communications.”
Cop says no camera
The school official, however, conceded that “we cannot just touch (the device) because it’s not ours. It’s an outdoor camera according to our IT. He knows because he used to install such devices himself.”
The PNP streamer concealing the device contained the cell phone numbers of the Manila Police District director, Chief Supt. Roberto Rosales; Station 9 commander Supt. Ferdinand Quirante and Pablo Ocampo Street precinct commander Chief Insp. Magno Gallora.
Reached for comment, Quirante admitted that he himself put up the Mamang Pulis tarpaulin with six other officers, but he denied installing a monitoring device behind it.
“We have no capability to install such cameras -- only tarpaulins,” the station commander said.
Quirante said he only learned of the purported camera through media reports and said that school authorities had yet to report it to the MPD.
Form of harassment
“If ever there are cameras out there, it would be for our anti-criminality campaign. But right now there are none,” he said. “We are always doing patrols in our areas but it has no connection to Lozada.”
“If that is (indeed a spy camera), then it’s a form of harassment (aimed at) our school,” said St. Scholastica’s Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB, national chair of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, a group providing sanctuary to Lozada.
“We’ve been here for a hundred years and this is the first time something like this has happened,” Mananzan told the Inquirer.
The device at SSC looked different from the spherical gizmo installed in front of La Salle Green Hills. The former has what appeared to be a lens pointed in the direction of SSC’s security supervisor’s office.
Noting this unusual positioning, Manila said the device may actually be for tapping phones rather than for visual surveillance.
“Our IT said we should observe it because it may be for monitoring our communications. These days we’ve actually been experiencing problems with our telephone connections.”
Four telephone lines, including her own direct line, bogged down Wednesday morning, Manila recalled.
Repairmen from the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. had the lines checked later in the afternoon but did not report seeing the suspicious device, she said.
Like a rock star
When he arrived at SSC for the 1 p.m. forum, Lozada -- who once compared himself to a crusading “Jedi,” one of the heroic knights in the “Star Wars” movie saga -- was greeted like a rock star by screaming fans in the all-girls school.
Hundreds of students from grade school to college chanted “Lo-za-da! Lo-za-da!” as he made his way to the packed auditorium.
“I do not want to cause a scandal, but I have been sleeping with the sisters in the last few weeks,” he said, drawing hearty laughter from the audience.
“The sisters would give me blankets. They would stay by my side every night. I would like to enjoin you young people to join the religious and be a sister or a father,” he said.
“We will never abandon you,” Mananzan said in response to Lozada’s appeal to the gathering to “see this thing through together.”
Last thing on mind
Asked by a student whether he had started having thoughts of running for President in the future, a grinning Lozada said: “I really love you. It’s the last thing on my mind.
“As I said I was just trying to save my soul. My wife is just shaking her head,” he said, referring to Violeta, who was seated in the front row.
“I have already been with the government, do I still have to enter politics? Ask my wife,” said Lozada, who resigned as president of the state-run Philippine Forest Corp. on the day he came out with his NBN exposés two weeks ago.
On a serious note, he said Filipinos “should not tire” of people power to fight corruption in government.
“It’s the people who will decide and God who will ordain it. People should not tire of people power. What we should get tired of are people who waste the gains of (our) noble actions … (who) use it for their own purpose,” he stressed.
