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Tuesday, April 04, 2006
There was cheating in 2004 elections: official
MANILA -- A ranking official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) admitted on Monday that cheating indeed took place during the May 2004 elections.
Comelec Commissioner Resurreccion Borra issued the statement during the Senate inquiry on the "Hello Garci" wiretapping controversy after watching video and Powerpoint presentations on how vote padding and shaving were done in Mindanao in favor of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Borra, however, said they should study first the evidence presented by Herminigildo Estrella Jr., a management consultant hired by Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. to examine the election returns, before they could take action on the matter.
He concurred with Estrella's presentations that votes in election returns might have been changed when it reached the provincial level because in his experience as a Comelec official, the provincial vote count is vulnerable to massive cheating.
Borra also said although he is convinced that there was cheating in the 2004 elections, evidence should be produced so that those people involved in the crime would be punished.
"We should act together and produce evidence to convict the cheaters so that this would not happen again in the future," he said.
He said the reason why they were not able to act on alleged cheating in the 2004 elections is because no one had provided them any evidence to prove it. He said the present electoral process should be reformed and human intervention should be minimized to avoid any cheating in future elections.
During the hearing, Estrella detailed how the Arroyo camp allegedly manipulated the results of the 2004 presidential elections in six provinces of Mindanao to ensure victory. He showed several election returns wherein the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. was leading but this later changed in the provincial canvassing in favor of President Arroyo.
He also presented election results in Maguindanao that showed Arroyo's victory although no voting was held there. He said then Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano asked for more statements of votes for Cotabato even after the elections.
Estrella said Arroyo's lead of more than one million votes came from the "padded" votes in the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-tawi, Sultan Kudarat, and other areas in Luzon and Visayas.
He said without vote padding and shaving, Poe would have led by 489,860 over the President, excluding the votes shaved from the National Capital Region (NCR) and Regions 1, 5, 9, 10, 11 and 12.
Other witnesses present in the Senate investigation -- Hadji Dalidig of the National Citizens Movement Free Elections (Namfrel) and Roberto Verzola of the Philippine Greens Institute -- supported Estrella's claim, saying that cheating also happened in Pampanga, Cebu, Bohol and Iloilo.
Senator Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on defense and national security, asked Borra to provide the panel the original election returns with duplicate copies that they could match it up with Estrella's documents.
Biazon said the Senate investigation on the controversy will continue so that the people would know the truth behind the alleged election fraud in the 2004 elections. At the same time, the Senate could come up with measures to prevent a repeat of the incident.
Malacañang, meanwhile, urged the Senate to prioritize the pending bills in the legislative agenda instead of trying to resurrect a dead issue like the "Hello Garci" controversy.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said the Senate still has to pass the proposed 2006 national budget and the anti-terrorism and anti-smuggling bills. "It's a pity because there are so many things they can devote energies to rather than reviving this ('Hello Garci' scandal) dead issue," he said.
Bunye, who is also the Presidential spokesman, said passing the 2006 budget would remove doubts on how public funds were to be allocated for the rest of the year. He hoped that the budget bill would be passed before the Lenten break.
The budget bill has yet to be approved on third reading at the House of Representatives.
Bunye said the Lower House approved the anti-smuggling bill in June last year but it has yet to get past the Senate committee level. He said the bill is needed to improve revenue collection and to strengthen the campaign against smugglers.
"The Senate's foot-dragging on the issue of the proposed anti-smuggling bill is another proof of the gridlock that has long bedeviled our political system," he said.
He said despite the differences between Congress and the executive department on Charter change issue, the two branches of government should show the people that they can work well on matters of high public interest. (JFF/JMR/With a report from UST intern Jonathan M. Mactan/Sunnex)
(April 4, 2006 issue)
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