The response made by the Ministry of Information’s Benjamin V. Lozare (BD Mail, Apr. 18) to the questions raised about his P330,000 contract with the office of Media Affairs (BD, Apr. 16) make Dr. Lozare look even worse.

If neither Dr. Lozare or any of his partners "ever sat down with Gregorio Cendana or any other KBL man to offer advice" on the elections and if "the two contracts have not yet been fully paid as of today," it would appear that Dr. Lozare never completed the job he had been contracted for.

If this is the case, it would appear that Dr. Lozare had been working for NAMFREL even while still under contract to OMA. Would this not constitute a conflict of interest?

And if Dr. Lozare, out of his commitment to NAMFREL, had deliberately left the job uncompleted (so as to sabotage OMA’s campaign strategy) would not Dr. Lozare be open to charges of breach of contract as well as professional misconduct?

If the contract called for Dr. Lozare to gather the data and to leave the analysis to OMA’s research staff, Dr. Lozare fulfilled his part of the contract. But in this case, wouldn’t professional ethics dictate that he advise OMA to save its money by hiring a market research firm direct?

Karla V. Castillo