What Went Wrong in the COMELEC?

WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE COMELEC?
The COMELEC's Fall From Grace
The questionable credentials and integrity of comissioners have wrecked the election body.

by ALECKS P. PABICO


TO DESTROY an institution like the Commission on Elections (Comelec), you must first fill it up with handpicked commissioners with questionable credentials and even more dubious impartiality. Then, let them run the constitutional body as if they were ruling over personal fiefdoms. This would then reduce middle-level bureaucrats to mere vassals doing — or forced to do — their every bidding, including perhaps, as the taped conversations involving President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano suggest, rigging the elections in their political benefactor's favor.

Such is the sorry state today of the constitutionally ordained guardian of the ballot that the pendulum of public opinion concerning its existence swings between two extreme calls: the mass resignation of its commissioners and its total abolition. Comelec's credibility, which enjoyed highs in the post-Marcos era during the days of Hilario Davide Jr. (now Supreme Court chief justice), Haydee Yorac (former Presidential Commission on Good Government chairperson) and Christian Monsod, has sunk so low, eroded through the years by the unending scandals involving corruption, incompetence, and partisanship.

These days, what was supposed to be an impartial body reeks of the politics of accommodation, one that has allowed politicians to stack it with officials and staff that they have endorsed. "The estimate by directors I've talked to is that as much as 93 percent of the entire rank and file are endorsed politically by various local officials and politicians," says Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (IPER).

Who is to blame for Comelec's fall from grace? A visibly appalled Monsod is rather straightforward: "I think it starts from the top. They have appointed the wrong leaders. They appointed commissioners that serve their own agenda. I blame the appointing power and Congress."

Under the Constitution, the president is vested with the authority to appoint the Comelec's seven commissioners who each have a seven-year term. Congress, through the bicameral Commission on Appointments (CA), confirms their appointments.

In Monsod's view, among the presidents who succeeded Marcos, it was only Corazon Aquino who was concerned about institution-building of the commission. Subsequent presidents — Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and the incumbent Arroyo — have all contributed to the weakening of the Comelec, he says, by politicizing the appointments of its commissioners.

HIRING POLITICIANS' RECOMMENDEES

Ramos was responsible for putting Bernardo Pardo to the chairmanship that Monsod had vacated in early 1995, even though Pardo himself admitted that he had no background in election law. The former general turned president also appointed two commissioners — Manolo Gorospe and Graduacion R. Claravall (now deceased) — who were bypassed by the CA seven times but whom he kept on appointing until they finally got confirmed.

It was the Pardo Comelec that started the practice of hiring applicants endorsed by politicians to the poll body. In a 1997 article in i magazine, a middle-level Comelec official recalled how Pardo had asked the screening committee to get endorsements from the city mayor in hiring election officers. A discussion among commissioners that the official witnessed revealed that one of them had already promised the position to someone endorsed by a congressman.

Pardo himself was less than conscious about being seen with politicians. On two occasions, he was among Ramos's traveling companions in the then president's visits to Mindanao, even allowing himself to be photographed beside the chief executive, flashing Ramos's signature thumbs-up sign.

Monsod also recalls that during the 1998 elections, Pardo went to Estrada and gave him the Comelec count. "In effect, he told Estrada that he had been elected president," relates Monsod. "First, it's not the Comelec that counts the presidential tally, it's Congress. Second, a Comelec chair should not go to a candidate and present the Comelec unofficial count and say you've been elected president."

As for Gorospe, his stint as commissioner is remembered more for his media antics. At one time, he earned the title "Kissing Lolo" for making unwelcome passes at fellow commissioner Remedios Salazar-Fernando, now appellate court justice, and Comelec secretaries. He was also involved in a tussle with Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, an incident that elicited a remark from the Comelec commissioner about the senator being mad at him only because she was jealous of his shapely legs. "In full view of the TV cameras, he raised his pale (but hairless) leg up for everyone to see," recalls ABS-CBN reporter Gigi Grande, who covered the Comelec for six years until 2003. By the 2004 elections, Gorospe had morphed into one of Arroyo's election lawyers.

Many had looked forward to a quieter Comelec when Alfredo Benipayo became its head in 2001. But the former Supreme Court administrator was soon ruing the day he stepped into the Comelec because of the so-called 'Gang of Four' that was made up of Estrada appointees Luzviminda Tancangco, Ralph Lantion, Rufino Javier, and Mehol Sadain. Together, they made life as Comelec chief unbearable for Benipayo, now the solicitor general.

Among the major sources of the much publicized petty politics and bitter squabbling in the Comelec was the Gang's intransigence on projects of the modernization committee headed by Tancangco. This included the Voter Registration and Identification System (VRIS), a P6.5-billion project to computerize voter registration and the voters' lists awarded to a consortium led by the Photokina Marketing Corp. during the time of President Estrada. The Supreme Court later voided the contract, 14-0, primarily because it was "illegal and against public policy" as the project cost was way beyond the amount appropriated by Congress. Only P1 billion had been allotted for the VRIS project in the 2000 national budget. (See sidebar for other Comelec scams and scandals)

For the Photokina fiasco and other alleged corrupt and unconstitutional acts, Tancancgo faced an impeachment complaint filed by more than 200 local and international civil society organizations under the People v. Tancancgo Movement. But the House committee on justice denied the conduct of a formal investigation in October 2003 for insufficiency of substance. This despite a 280-page complaint supported by official Comelec and Commission on Audit documents.

UNPRECEDENTED IN COMELEC HISTORY

Benipayo is the immediate predecessor of current Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr., who was appointed in June 2002. Abalos's appointment is unprecedented in the commission's history, because he is a politician and a known Lakas party stalwart. A former chief of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and three-term Mandaluyong city mayor, Abalos has acknowledged his close friendship with First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, as well as siblings of the president. His personal ties with the Chua family, owners of Photokina, are also known.

Arroyo's other controversial appointees included Commissioners Virgilio Garcillano and Manuel Barcelona Jr. The two were considered only ad interim appointments because Congress was no longer in session when Arroyo named them in February 2004 to replace the retired Tancangco and Lantion. They were bypassed by Congress in June 2004 but were reinstated by Arroyo until their appointments lapsed in June this year.

A Marcos-era election official, Garcillano retired as Region 10 director in 2002 before being resurrected as Comelec commissioner. He has been accused of masterminding dagdag-bawas operations in Mindanao. By the 2004 elections, Garcillano was commissioner for Region 4 (Southern Tagalog).

Barcelona, meanwhile, was put in charge of several Mindanao regions including the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). According to Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Barcelona was "a partisan member of the Gloria Bantay Bayan," a pro-Arroyo organization that contributed funding to the president's campaign. But it was apparently the more Mindanao-elections-savvy Garcillano that Arroyo relied upon and called up to "protect" her votes down south.

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

IPER's Casiple says the "reform generation" in the Comelec spawned by Edsa 1, the first "people power" revolt that ousted the Marcoses, has barely managed to survive. "The only remnant of the Monsod reform era who is still there physically is Commissioner (Resurreccion) Borra," he says. "Sadain would have been reform-oriented also but he never went that far. Tuason (Florentino Jr.) was also a good candidate but he is sickly and just went with the flow. The rest are true blue politicians — Abalos, Javier, Barcelona, and Garcillano. With that kind of combination, you can't really expect much."

Recent changes have just made matters worse. Casiple points to the commissioner-in-charge (CIC) system being implemented in place of the old bureaucracy of regional directors and an executive director. Under the CIC system, the regional directors have become mere pawns taking orders from the commissioner. At the same time, regional directors — only a handful of whom are civil-service eligible — no longer report to the executive director as they now deal directly with the commissioner-in-charge.

"The collegial character of the Comelec has been lost," says Casiple. "Many decisions are now made by a single commissioner in the area where he or she is in charge. Basically, these are approved by the Comelec en banc. It has become a sort of bargaining tit-for-tat, if one approves of the actions of another commissioner, then the other also approves of his or hers. In the end, kanya-kanya talaga (it's every man for himself)."

Over the years, the setup has evolved into a power play with the commissioners usurping the directors' powers. An extreme demonstration of this was, upon the motions of then Commissioner Tancangco, the executive director was basically stripped of his executive powers. Recounts Casiple: "Nagmukhang tanga ang executive director (The executive director was reduced to an idiot). He can't attend Comelec meetings when he's not invited. All documents and reports will have to go through the commissioner-in-charge. That was how absolute the CIC system was in the last elections."

Even the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) mission — which had representatives from the International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) — that monitored the May 2004 polls noted in its report that the CIC system is "seriously flawed and largely dysfunctional." Instead of the chairman and six commissioners functioning as a board of directors overseeing policy matters, the "Commissioners have maintained an undersized and marginalized staff of civil servants, and assumed operational responsibilities over geographic and functional areas."

BREEDING CULTURE OF CORRUPTION AND PATRONAGE

To some extent, the report said, this has allowed the commissioners to "focus on expanding and strengthening their personal portfolios." Such a system, both insiders and observers agree, has only bred a culture of corruption and patronage as officials and staff have become beholden to the commissioners.

"Our professionalism and our being career officials were destroyed under Abalos because those who were promoted were the politicos and the corrupt," says a Comelec official. He cites the case of an election officer in Metro Manila with a salary grade of 21 whom Garcillano promoted to regional director, which has a salary grade of 28 — a seven-step salary-grade increase when the law allows a maximum of only three steps. Worse, he says, was the Comelec's accommodation of a losing candidate, to whom it gave the position of Director IV with an equivalent salary grade of 28; the politician-turned-Comelec official eventually left his post to run in the last elections.

There are, of course, Comelec personnel who have remained professional and reform-minded. But as Monsod points out, "Who would dare risk being at odds with a commissioner when seven years already correspond to a third of one's career in public service?"

In the post-Monsod era, nongovernmental organizations like IPER are also finding it a painstaking task to push for electoral reforms. In fact, when Pardo took over, NGOs that nurtured a partnership with the Comelec through the Consortium on Electoral Reforms (formerly Citizens' Consortium on Electoral Reforms) had to momentarily disengage for lack of any clear direction of reform initiatives within the poll body.

The working relationship was revived when Benipayo became chairman and came up with a reform program of his own. But it proved to be rather short-lived after the appointments commission bypassed the apolitical Benipayo several times owing largely to the very public infighting in the Comelec.

In contrast, under the watch of Monsod, the CCER, created with the main advocacy of introducing amendments to the Omnibus Election Code and laws enabling the provisions of the Constitution, provided the impetus for the passage of the Party List Act, Fair Elections Act, and the laws on continuing registration, electoral modernization, and the most recent, overseas absentee voting. Still to be hurdled are bills on local sectoral representation, political dynasties, political party reform and campaign financing, and amendments to the party-list law.

RETHINKING THE COMELEC

For all its flaws, there are still those who think the Comelec is still worth saving. Among them is Monsod, who even thinks that President Arroyo, despite the troubles she is in right now, should take the first step by appointing two new, good commissioners. "Let people interpret it the way they want to," he says. "But if she appoints two good commissioners, that will be good for the Comelec. That is institution-building."

But a Comelec director thinks that's not enough. "There should be an investigation of the recordings to find out who were the ones involved," he says, insisting that such a call is not intended to ruin the Comelec but to strengthen it."

"That's why I am not ashamed of what happened," he says. "I am glad that this happened. Because I hope this will lead to the cleansing of the Comelec."

One of IPER's proposals, which the CEPPS mission adopted, is to abolish the commission as a permanent body. In its place would be a secretariat that will handle purely administrative functions like the keeping of records and equipment, and the continuing registration of voters. The commission will only be set up just before an election, its officers chosen by a selection process involving all the political parties and "civil society" organizations. That way, there is concurrence with all the appointees. At the same time, it prevents the undue influence exerted on them since they will be known only days before an election is conducted.

In the meantime, Casiple says, "If they (Comelec commissioners) are statesmen, they should tender their courtesy resignation immediately if only to save the institution and its integrity"

"But it seems there's a slim chance in that," he says, "because they're denying that they're in crisis. And these are the same people who will handle the upcoming ARMM elections."

The Sins of the Commission

Sidebar
The Sins of the Commission

THE COMMISSION on Elections has a lot to account for, with some of its "mistakes" running into billions of taxpayers' pesos. Ironically, some of its costliest errors had started out as a means to improve the election process and minimize voting irritants. Some fiascos:

Failed Election Modernization Program

The Comelec wasted P2.3 billion for its modernization program timed for the 2004 national elections. Phase 1 of the program is the voters validation system that cost P1 billion. Phase 2 is the automated counting and canvassing programmed supposedly costing P1.3 billion but for which only P1 billion was disbursed. Phase 3 is the electronic data transmission, consolidation, and dissemination of results worth P300 million.

The voter validation system was a rehash of VRIS (Voter Registration and Information System), the controversial tamper-proof voters' ID system that was struck down by the Supreme Court for an anomalous bidding process that awarded the contract to Photokina Marketing Corp. It would have cost the country P6.5 billion — with that amount covering only a partial completion of the project.

Since the validation system did not have any budgetary allocation, Comelec had to source funds from the budget for the automated counting machines (ACMs) to purchase data capturing machines. When it suspended the validation process on December 12, 2003, Comelec was only able to validate 5.7 million voters (though the last report was 9 million) out of the 38 million voters. Not a single voter got an ID.

When the lists were released in April 2004, the total number of voters jumped up to 43.5 million, an increase of seven million people since the last elections in 2001. The increase, which was inconsistent with the population growth rate, was traced by a Comelec official (who had opposed the validation system) to the fact that it was done simultaneously with the registration of first-time voters using the same forms.

Days before the 2004 elections, the Supreme Court invalidated the P1.3-billion contract won by a Korean firm-led consortium that would have allowed the use of ACMs. The Court decision cited a number of glaring irregularities that attended the bidding process, among which were: the award of the contract to an unqualified bidder, Mega Pacific eSolutions, which was incorporated 11 days before the submission of bids; the changing of the bid specifications in the middle of the evaluation; and the award of the contract prior to the report of the bids and awards committee.

Comelec has already paid Mega Pacific P1.04 billion. The South Korean vendor, meantime, rejected the commission's request for it to buy back the ACMs. The machines are being kept in the Comelec Maxilite warehouse, for which the commission is paying P3.9 million in storage fees each year.

Comelec's efforts to undertake its own Quick Count via VSAT (very small aperture terminal)-automated transmission was similarly halted by the Supreme Court as it was part of the voided contract with Mega Pacific. The Court's ruling also indicated a lack of confidence in the Comelec to competently carry out and report the results of its quick count. The Comelec likewise allocated P300 million from the ACM-purchase fund for the failed electronic canvassing and transmission. A Comelec official admitted that the deployment of the technology was already too late and that they didn't have trained personnel to operate the system.

Lack of Serious Voter Education

There is very little evidence, notes the International Republican Institute in its report on the 2004 elections, that the Comelec gave significant priority to its responsibility to conduct a basic and broadly disseminated voter education program.

The only department that is remotely connected with voter education is the Information and Education Department, which basically just tries to package the laws and Comelec resolutions in question-and-answer form to be distributed to voters. Very few regional offices like the one in NCR are able to do on their own initiative campaigns to educate voters.

IPER's Ramon Casiple puts it more bluntly: "There has been no decent voter education that's been done for the past 20 years after Marcos. We have three generations of Filipinos comprising virtually all of the electorate who did not go through any serious education on elections and democracy. And more than half of them are from the martial-law generation. In such a situation, you will not be surprised why votes are for sale, why elections are like fiestas, and why the popular candidates win."

Abalos's "Father of the Comelec" Acts

Barely warming his seat as Comelec chair, Benjamin Abalos Sr. went on a spending spree by authorizing a performance incentive pay equivalent to a month's salary for the poll body's 5,200 personnel, which at an average of P10,000 per employee translated to some P52 million. Abalos also approved the purchase of seven new cars — at P1.2 million each — for all the commissioners despite their having been issued two to four vehicles each, including the latest models of Grandias, Chevrolet Ventures, and Stratas.

Meetings of the commissioners have also turned classy since Abalos replaced Alfredo Benipayo as the new chairman prefers flashy restaurants, the most frequented of which is Wack Wack Golf and Country Club, in which Abalos has shares.

Pardo's Ballot-Counting Machines

The 1997 Election Automation Act called for the use of ballot-counting machines to tally votes at the precinct level and to consolidate the municipal, provincial and national results. But the automated system was used only in the ARMM provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi in 1998.

The multibillion peso automated counting machines used, however, suffered massive and total systems breakdown that resulted in their inability to read the ballots properly, the failure of the ballots to reject spurious and excess ballots, as well as material discrepancies of the figures in various election documents. Along with several dozen obsolete Polaroid cameras, the counting machines that could not count are now sitting idly in some Comelec warehouse.

Eddie Gil's Presidential Bid

How could the Abalos Comelec have allowed Eddie Gil to run for president? The more respectable past members of the Commission would never have allowed a nuisance candidate to make a circus out of the elections.



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Virgilio Garcillano: The Master Operator

VIRGILIO GARCILLANO
The Master Oprerator
The man whose voice is heard on The Tapes is an expert in election fraud.
by SHEILA S. CORONEL


FRAUD EXPERT. Virgilio Garcillano used his skills and experiece to manipulate the 2004 count.

VIRGILIO Garcillano will go down in history as the election official whose wiretapped conversations mortally wounded a president. He disappeared from public view in the second week of June, as the controversy over the wiretaps heated up, and many may have a hard time recalling what he looks like. Yet his raspy voice, distinctive lisp, and thick Visayan accent are now embedded in the audio memory of millions of Filipinos who have listened to the "Garci" tapes.

It is unlikely Garcillano would ever live this down or that he would be able to return again to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Already, the damage his recorded phone calls have caused, not only to the Comelec but also to the presidency, is so severe and so devastating, both these institutions have to undergo massive cleansing if they are to recover their credibility and respectability.

Philippine elections are complex. The manual voting, counting, and canvassing are governed by arcane rules. There are for example, 28 rules just on the appreciation of ballots. And that's just one small section of the Omnibus Election Code, a huge ton)e guaranteed to give the reader migraine. The section on prohibited offenses alone is mind-boggling.

The law, therefore, abounds with procedural minefields awaiting those who are ignorant of it. But Garcillano honed his skills and his knowledge of election laws and procedures through his long years in the poll body. He also developed an extensive network of contacts, especially in Mindanao, where he was assigned.

Garcillano's life was the Comelec, the very office that he helped destroy. He joined the agency as a lawyer in 1961, when he was only in his mid-20s. Except for a six-year gap from 1986 to 1993, when he was purged by the leadership of the post-Marcos commission, he served at the Comelec continuously until he dropped out of sight last month.

He had risen up the ranks, eventually retiring as director for Region 10 (Northern Mindanao) in 2002. Thanks to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, he was appointed commissioner on February 11, 2004, just as the presidential campaign was kicking off.

A TECHNOCRAT OF FRAUD

Garcillano was an election technocrat, a career bureaucrat with specialized skills in a specific sphere of government. These skills are invaluable for the efficient administration of elections. But they can also be used for more sinister purposes. As the "Garci" tapes revealed and as those who know him well say, the commissioner was a master fraud operator who used his knowledge of election laws and procedures, his long field experience, and his extensive network of contacts to rig the vote in favor of President Arroyo, Senator Robert Barbers, and a few other local politicians.

"He was the plotter for electoral fraud, the overall supervisor and commander in chief," says a Comelec official who asked not to be named. "He was working for GMA."

"He set up the infrastructure for cheating," says Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, who has heard the "Garci" recording and who led the opposition protest against alleged vote rigging in the 2004 elections. "He was the operator for Gloria. He knew how the cheating was done in Mindanao and he manipulated the vote so GMA's lead would not be less than one million."

In an interview with journalists on June 7, just days before his mysterious disappearance, Garcillano denied all these allegations and insisted it was not his voice on the tape. But several Comelec officials interviewed by the PCIJ as well as former Comelec chair Christian Monsod confirm it is indeed Garcillano's voice that is in the recording. Moreover, Garcillano identified himself in several of the wiretapped conversations and also spoke to various individuals — his wife Grace, his secretary Ellen Peralta, and his maid Lyn — whose connection to him cannot be denied.

Still, while Garcillano is almost surely the one on the tape, he was probably not the overall fraud strategist. That role probably belonged to other aides of the president. His specialty was postelection fraud in Mindanao. As reported elsewhere and as alleged by the opposition, the rigging of the 2004 vote took place in many parts of the country, and was particularly intense in Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol. Mindanao may have been typecast as the arena for fraud, but the reality is that candidates cheat where they are strongest and where the manipulation would be less obvious.

Mindanao, however, was Garcillano's particular area of expertise, and he was probably appointed for this reason. It also happened that Mindanao was the arena of contention between the administration and the opposition. While the surveys had indicated that Luzon would likely go for Fernando Poe Jr., and the Visayas, for Arroyo, Mindanao was up for grabs. Its votes were likely to deliver the winning margin, and it was apparently Garcillano's role to make sure that margin went to the President.

The wiretapped recordings, which start on May 17, 2004, a week after elections, and end on June 18, give little indication of Garcillano's role during the election campaign and the actual voting. It is, however, a treasure trove for uncovering the postelection manipulation of the results. It is apparent from the conversations that Garcillano was the orchestrator, the conductor of a symphony of fraud, at least for Mindanao. He was the one coordinating the workings of elections officials on the ground, Comelec officials in Manila, and the military and the police, which are "deputized" or placed under the authority of the Comelec for the duration of the elections.

In other words, the very individuals and institutions that were supposed to guard the ballot were actually the very same ones manipulating the count. Garcillano was thus not the sole culprit: he was at the hub of a network of fraud that included scores, if not hundreds, of other government officials and employees.

THE MOST POWERFUL COMMISSIONER

But Garcillano was one of the most crucial parts of that network. His rise to become, in the words of one Comelec insider, "the most powerful commissioner in Comelec" — eclipsing even Chairman Benjamin Abalos — was largely due to his election expertise and experience. At 68, and with 40 years of election experience behind him, Garcillano had a far more comprehensive knowledge of election procedures than his other colleagues in the agency. The other commissioners deferred to him because of this, as well as his seniority and his perceived closeness to Malacañang. In addition, he was an assertive figure who knew how to exercise power while getting along superbly with the others. It was then no surprise that he eventually overshadowed Abalos, a lackadaisical and lackluster Comelec chief who was not very familiar with election laws.

"He really knew the law and the process," Monsod said, referring to Garcillano, in a recent television interview, "and he was very good at interpersonal relations."

For sure, the commissioner was popular among Comelec employees. As election boss in Northern Mindanao, he was famous for treating his staff to overseas trips and for organizing athletic competitions with big prizes solicited from politicians. He was popular at the main office in Intramuros as well. Garcillano liked to drink and to socialize with the Comelec staff, and managed to cement friendships with many of them during those drinking sessions. (In one of the recorded conversations, his wife reprimands him for drinking with his colleagues even in the afternoon.) He was such an amiable boss and colleague that some of the elections personnel whose conversations with Garcillano were recorded in the wiretaps referred to him as "Tatay" or "'Tay" (dad). With his thinning hair and soft facial features, he even looked the part of a doting father.

"He was very friendly," says a Comelec official, "and he loves to lead a group, he takes the initiative."

By being Mr. Congeniality, Garcillano was able to pinpoint compliant elections officials and persuade them, through gifts and other inducements, to do his bidding. Indeed, even prior to his appointment as Comelec commissioner, Garcillano had already earned a reputation for being a master of dagdag-bawas or vote padding and shaving operations. These entail tampering with the results of the municipal or provincial canvass. This is wholesale fraud, and is consequently more efficient than the retail doctoring of the count at the precinct level.

Sen. Pimentel, for one, says that even during the Marcos era, Garcillano was already "a known partisan operator of whoever was in power at that time." Pimentel has accused Garcillano not only of involvement in dagdag-bawas operations but also of distributing money in previous elections to Comelec officials from the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

All these qualities made Garcillano perfect for the role he was to play in the 2004 elections. Although he became a commissioner only three months before the polls, he was soon taking on a lot of tasks, including vetting appointments, even of utility personnel, say Comelec insiders. Before long, he had a say in who was going to be named to man election posts in sensitive areas. It eventually came to the point that all memos issued by Abalos passed through Garcillano. By election time, he was acting as the Comelec's de facto chair, says an elections official. He was therefore in a position to orchestrate large-scale, institutional fraud.

MESSING AROUND IN MINDANAO

Although of Ilocano parentage, Garcillano was a native of Mindanao and was also assigned there for many years. This made him particularly useful for post-election operations. Mindanao is key to the last-minute manipulation of the count. For logistical reasons, such as the longer travel time from precincts to canvass centers, lack of transport, etc., the Mindanao count is slower compared to those elsewhere.

There are also fewer independent pollwatchers in Mindanao, so it is easier to delay and manipulate the count. In places where private armies rule, the vote can be rigged wholesale. In other areas, Comelec officials can be persuaded to delay the count because of either election protests or other problems.

Sometimes, elections are postponed or a failure of elections is declared, so a new voting would have to be held, again delaying the canvass.

These delays in the municipal and provincial canvass — whether deliberate or unintended — allow unscrupulous election officials to bargain with politicians desperate to get the "winning" margin of votes. By then, the trend elsewhere in the country would already be taking shape and a senatorial or presidential candidate, for example, would have some indication if he or she would win and whether last-minute operations would be needed.

Even if Mindanao votes are involved, some of the transactions that are part of the wholesale fraud are done in Manila. In the past, some of the dagdag-bawas or vote shaving/padding took place at the three-star Aloha Hotel on Roxas Blvd., where election officials from Mindanao were billeted and where they met with the hatchet men of various candidates and parties. In a June 3, 2004 conversation, Garcillano was talking to an unidentified man, telling him he would be hanging out at the Aloha Hotel.

HUB OF FRAUD

Garcillano's functions were multifaceted. It is apparent that he acted as:
Overseer of fraud operations in Mindanao. In several conversations, it was obvious that Garcillano was giving instructions to local election officials to manipulate the count for particular candidates. These included the president, Barbers, and some local candidates. In a conversation on May 24, for example, the commissioner ordered an unidentified man, "Isagad mo kay Senator Barbers, ha. Tapos huwag mong ipababol si Biazon (Push Senator Barbers to the max and don't allow Biazon to catch up). He also assured the person he was talking with: "Basta may regalo para sa 'yo (I'll make sure there's a gift ready for you)."

It would seem from the conversations that the manipulation took many forms. This could include delaying or finishing a canvass, depending whichever would suit a candidate at a particular time. It could also mean declaring a failure of elections (if a favored candidate lost) and scheduling special elections. In some places, as in Cotabato, it entailed replacing the statements of votes or SOVs, which carried the tally of the votes for a municipality, with new and presumably tampered ones. These tactics could only be thought of by someone like Garcillano, who has intimate knowledge of election laws and procedures.

Liaison officer between politicians, on one hand, and dections officials and me military, on the other. Garcillano's conversations indicate that he acted as a facilitator between politicians who wanted to ensure their victory and a range of officials in the areas where the vote manipulation was taking place. He was like a clearing post to which instructions were sent and from which orders were passed down the line.

He was dealing with officials higher up (the Comelec chair and the president) as well as lower down the ladder. In one of the most damning and most frequently replayed "Hello Garci" conversations, one which supposedly took place in the morning of May 29, 2004, President Arroyo wanted an assurance that her lead would be about one million votes. "So will I still lead by more than 1M overall?" she asked. Garcillano told her that so far it was about 982,000, but more votes would come from Lanao, where tallies from seven municipalities had not yet been included in the provincial canvass. "Pipilitin ho natin yan (we will try our best)," he assured her.

Garcillano was apparently also coordinating with the police. He told President Arroyo that his people in Zamboanga were already cooperating with Arturo Lamibao, then head of the PNP's Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and now PNP chief. In addition, the commissioner told the president he had problems in Marawi, because the Marine commander in charge of the Lanao provinces, Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, was sympathetic to the opposition. But, said Garcillano, thanks to the support of Southern Command chief Lt. Gen. Roy Kyarnko and Brig. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., who once headed the Presidential Security Group and was then Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for operations, Gudani was taken out of the way.

In fact, Gudani was pulled out of Marawi on May 11, 2004 and some of his staff was grounded. As Newsbreak reported then, Gudani's transfer to Manila the day after the elections violated the rules as personnel transfers in the military cannot take place from election day and 30 days after. Newsbreak also reported that the action taken against Gudani demoralized the ranks of the Marines.

PAYMASTER AND DAMAGE CONTROLLER

Damage controller who ensures no complaints of fraud are filed or made public. It was also Garcillano's task to make sure that none of the fraud was discovered. He had to be quick on his toes and ready to take whatever damage-control measures were needed at that time. When told, for example, that Rashma Hali, the election officer of Tipo-Tipo, Basilan, was set to testify on election anomalies on the opposition's side, Garcillano tried to locate her. Someone identified only as "Boy" suggested having Hali or a member of her family kidnapped to silence her, but Garcillano batted for taking a "soft touch" first by finding a "well-meaning" relative to "persuade" her not to say anything.

He was also asked by the president to make sure that the administration was well covered both in fighting the fraud from the opposition and in ensuring that complaints of fraud against the administration would go nowhere. "I'm just letting you know everything I found out para we can always make the appropriate remedies," she told the commissioner in one of their conversations. Among the president's worries were reports of empty ballot boxes in Camarines Norte (Garcillano said he would call up the election supervisor there and check) and a mismatch betWeen the statements of votes (Says) and the certificates of canvass (COCs) in Basilan and Lanao del Sur (he assured the president that the artificial increase in her count in those places was done well and would resist detection).

In a conversation at about 10 p.m. on June 2,2004, Garcillano complained to the president that the military didn't do such a good tamper job in Sulu but assured her that it was okay, because he would ensure that no one would testify in case of a complaint. He also told her not to fret about a report that the opposition would file an election complaint in Languyan, Tawi-Tawi and that it already had teachers (who act as elections officers) in the Witness Protection Program. ..Wala naman tayong ginawa do'n (we didn't do anything there)," he assured the president. We even lost there, the commissioner added.

Paymaster for bribes to elections officials. In several of the conversations, particularly those with Barbers, the subject was payoffs to be made to Comelec personnel in the field. Garcillano was apparently a conduit for the bribes, with his secretary being seconded to accept the money. In a talk with Barbers on June 5,Garcillano asked that P.1.5 to P2 million be delivered to his office, through his secretary Ellen Peralta. Presumably that money was going to be used for special operations to add votes for Barbers, who was trailing in the senatorial count. In an earlier conversation, on June 3, Barbers had asked the commissioner for help to get 70,000 more votes.

Barbers also complained about the exorbitant amounts that Comelec field personnel were demanding, although the candidate appeared prepared to pay. "'Di bale kung rasonable," Barbers said, "puede naman tayong magdagdag (As long as what they're asking for is reasonable, I can add more)." There were similar references to payoffs in other conversations. Euphemisms were used: regalo (gift), requirement, para sa mga bata (for the boys).

As if he weren't already very busy with all these, Garcillano did other operations on the side. He promised to look into the request of Isabel a Gov. Faustino Dy Jr., who wanted a favorable decision on his case holding the proclamation of gubernatorial candidate Grace Padaca. As a member of the First Division then hearing the proclamation case, Garcillano was asked to help out with the case when it went to the Comelec en banc. The First Division had in fact issued a restraining order on Padaca's proclamation. He was also asked by former Biliran Rep. Gerry Espina to talk to members of the Second Division and intercede for the case of one of the congressman's wards. It appears that Garcillano did some magic as well to ensure the victory of Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.

THE ROT AT THE CORE

How Garcillano could last so long in the Comelec and even assume a top position in the very body tasked with guarding the sanctity of the ballot attests to the rot in the very core of the commission. Blame also rests squarely on the shoulders of President Arroyo, who appointed Garcillano despite protests from her own allies.

Senator Franklin Drilon, for instance, had urged the president to withdraw Garcillano's nomination. "People in the know say nasty things about him," Drilon said in February 2004, and asked Arroyo to help rebuild the Comelec's credibility by appointing officials with unquestioned integrity to the poll body.

Namfrel and other NGOs, too, objected to the appointment of a man with a less-than-savory track record, especially at a time when the Comelec had not even recovered from the controversy over overpriced counting machines. Monsod said he wrote a letter to then Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo to say that Garcillano's appointment would be a grievous mistake.

Yet the president stood by Garcillano, and her spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, even issued a statement saying that Garcillano's appointment "is obviously being exploited as a tool for mudslinging and an avenue for settling a personal grudge. We will not dignify this allegation unless it is substantiated by strong and concrete pieces of evidence."

Abalos promptly appointed Garciliano as the corrunissioner in charge of Northern Mindanao, Western Mindanao, and Socsargen (South Cotabato, Sarangani, and Gen. Santos City). But this assignment was so scandalous that Abalos was forced to withdraw it. The Comelec chair then put Garcillano to task in the Southern Tagalog region, where it was thought he would do less harm.

But the mischief continued. At the height of the debate over the citizenship of Fernando Poe Jr., Garcillano said the candidate should be disqualified from the presidential race. That statement cast serious doubts on the commissioner's impartiality and he subsequently had to apologize for being "too presumptuous."

On May 13, 2004, barely three days after the election, Garcillano was seen dining at a private room at the Manila Diamond Hotel with Philippine Amusements and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) chair Efraim Genuino. Pimentel promptly held a press conference, accusing the commissioner of accepting a bagful of money from the Pagcor head. Garcillano denied the meeting took place, although Newsbreak independently confirmed that it did. The commissioner also said that the bag his aide was seen carrying out of the hotel contained a stuffed toy, not cash. But it didn't help him any that Pagcor itself was swirling in controversy for supposedly siphoning funds to the presidential campaign.

Thus, when President Arroyo reappointed Garcillano to the Comelec onJune 30, 2004 because the Commission on Appointments had bypassed his nomination before Congress closed earlier that month, the howls of protest were heard again.

The Institute for Popular Democracy said that the reappointment was "a sign of a dark future for electoral reforms under the new administration." Little did it — or anybody else — foresee how much of an understatement that would turn out to be.

The Tangled Tale of The Tapes

Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | August 23, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Filed under: 2004 Electoral Fraud, Gloriagate

FORMER intelligence agent Vidal Doble Jr. has surfaced to claim that the recordings of phone conversations allegedly between Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and former elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano are genuine, serving only to revive interest in the so-called “Hello, Garci” tapes.

What Doble is now saying confirms what we found out at the height of the scandal in 2005 based on our interviews with both opposition and intelligence sources: that the existence of the wiretaps was first brought up by Lito Santiago, the driver of former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deputy director Samuel Ong. Santiago happened to be a drinking buddy of Doble, who had talked about the recordings in a drinking session with the former.

Ong eventually came out in public to claim that he had in his possession “the mother of all tapes.” The recordings documented what appeared to be efforts to manipulate the results of the 2004 elections to favor Arroyo, generating a debilitating political crisis that nearly toppled her government.

In this light, we are bringing back the post that we wrote back then that tried to figure out how it all started. For other PCIJ reports on the scandal, see also our entries in the following blog categories: Gloriagate and 2004 Electoral Fraud.

WIRETAP CENTRAL

SOON after the elections in May 2004, Military Intelligence Group (MIG) 21, the signal intelligence unit of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or ISAFP, got the order to tap a certain phone number.

The request was not unusual. MIG 21 is the ISAFP unit that specializes in communications and surveillance. It is, in a manner of speaking, wiretap central for the AFP. In fact, the unit takes pride in its accomplishments, which include tapping phone calls that led to cracking kidnapping and other crime gangs, the exposure of New People’s Army operations, and uncovering the trail of the elusive and predatory Abu Sayyaf.

In May 2004, MIG 21 was informed of reports reaching the military’s Southern Command that the votes in some places in Mindanao “were being sold to the highest bidder.” An order to tap a phone number came down from higher headquarters. MIG 21 did what it was told. Only later did the agents discover that the phone number belonged to Virgilio Garcillano, the former elections commissioner now at the center of an election fraud scandal that has shaken the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
According to military intelligence operatives contacted by the PCIJ over the last few months, this was how the “Hello, Garci” recordings came about. In his testimony at the House of Representatives last Wednesday, Garcillano admitted he was a victim of wiretapping, although he refused to admit that his was the voice in the recording that has been made public.

While he did not say who was guilty of bugging him, the Senate has pointed to ISAFP. After all, it was an ISAFP agent who sold the recording to the opposition. ISAFP is also said to be President Arroyo’s favorite military unit. The ISAFP chief sometimes reports to her directly, even bypassing the chain of command.

The question that remains unanswered is whether the order to bug Garcillano came from Malacañang itself and whether concerns about the election official’s loyalty to the president had prompted the wiretapping. The other mystery is this: if the president knew Garcillano was being tapped, why did she call him not just once, but according to the recording, 15 times? Was she as much a victim as Garcillano was? If so, why didn’t she raise hell about being bugged and investigate and punish those guilty? If, on the other hand, she knew the eavesdropping was being done, was she so confident of ISAFP’s loyalty and discretion that she couldn’t care less?

The truth is that illegal wiretapping has been part of the toolkit of military intelligence for decades. It’s just that it has almost never been talked about in the open. Anti-crime groups are privy to, and tolerate, unauthorized bugging operations as these have proved useful in running after criminal gangs. But ISAFP, for one, has never admitted it is engaged in wiretapping or even that it has the capacity to tap mobile phones.

The Senate defense committee’s threat to look into wiretapping operations of military intelligence, however, could blow the lid off a practice that military officers believe is a necessary part of keeping law and order. Sen. Rodolfo Biazon wants to reconstitute the Senate select committee on intelligence . “It is a serious breach of national security if the the commander in chief is wiretapped,” he says.

That investigation could open up a can of worms. The reality is that top brass of the military and the police tolerate illegal wiretapping because they deem it essential to fighting terrorists, kidnappers and assorted criminals. Even civilian authorities are not totally clueless: in most cases they would rather not know.

Over the last few months, intelligence officers contacted by the PCIJ confirmed that wiretapping was used in some of the most successful military and police operations in recent years. These officers spoke to PCIJ but insisted on anonymity for security reasons. They said that electronic eavesdropping was instrumental in the arrest of numerous members of kidnap gangs, ranking communists, Abu Sayyaf rebels and even the Indonesian Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.

These intelligence officers say that anti-crime and anti-insurgency operations would be more difficult to carry out without wiretapping. While it is possible to get a court order to tap a phone, many operatives believe that this would slow down operations and cause what could be fatal delays. Besides, many of them don’t trust the courts.

But as the Gloriagate scandal has revealed, the routine practice of disregarding legal norms has also led to abuses, primarily the use of wiretapping operations no longer for anti-crime or anti-terrorist campaigns, but for partisan political purposes.

In fact, Biazon reveals that the “master tapes” turned over to him last week by former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong contained conversations of still-unidentified individuals that date back to January 2004. The intelligence sources also say that that Ong had not released to the public Garcillano’s conversations with former president Joseph Estrada, Senator Edgardo Angara, and former AFP chief Joselin Nazareno, who remains loyal to Estrada.

How the wiretaps are done

According to an intelligence official interviewed by Newsbreak, ISAFP acquired equipment sometime in 2002 that could monitor 500 cellphones at any given time. The article did not describe how this equipment works and whether this was the one used for tapping Garcillano’s phone.

Intelligence officers contacted by the PCIJ say that the technology used for Garcillano was far more primitive. Tapping mobile-phone conversations through “air interface,” even with sophisticated equipment, they say, is difficult: the wiretapper has to be near or at the cellsite through which the call is coursed so he could eavesdrop on a conversation. But even then, there is no assurance that particular cellsite is transmitting that call and it is difficult to sort which of those calls are being made by the target.

But eavesdropping can be facilitated by intelligence assets embedded in telecommunications companies. Phone companies have all denied rumors that they were cooperating with intelligence agencies. At the height of the Gloriagate scandals, these companies asserted they had nothing to do with the illegal bugging operations.They even told the National Telecommunications Commission in a hearing last July the difficulty of intercepting and recording mobile-phone calls.

But the intelligence officers, who say they had taken part in wiretapping operations, insist that ISAFP has assets in phone companies that allow them to conduct the wiretaps with relative ease. They say the bugging is done with the help of phone company employees without having to use sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. With their help, wiretapping can be done from a remote location, such as the MIG 21 headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo. They say that all MIG 21 uses to eavesdrop is a phone that is connected to an analog tape recorder. That phone picks up all the conversations on the target’s phone and all the agent has to do is pick up the handset every time a call is made and record the calls.

MIG 21, these intelligence sources say, has a log book where the agent on duty records the time, date, the name of the caller if it can be identified, the number calling and the number called. As previously reported in this blog, whenever a tape is filled, the agent then removes it from the recording device and immediately starts preparing what would later become the “master tape.”

The master tape will be purged of irrelevant conversations but will also contain the annotations made by the intelligence operative based on the logbook. These annotations give the time, date and if identifiable, the persons involved in the conversation. This procedure of dubbing the master is followed in most agencies engaged in intelligence work, our sources said, and they identified some of these agencies as the Presidential Security Group, National Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Intelligence Security Group and the Philippine National Police Intelligence Group.

T/Sgt. Vidal Doble was one of those agents recording Garcillano’s conversations and then transferring them on to the master tape. In fact, his voice, as well as those of two other MIG21 agents — a M/Sgt Billedo and a M/Sgt Callos — is heard in the recording, announcing the time and date at the start of each phone call.

It was this master tape that eventually came into the possession of Ong, the former NBI official who made copies of the “Hello, Garci” recording public. The recording was distributed to the press in CD format when Ong held a press conference in Makati in June. That recording is also posted on this blog.

Doble’s game

The key person in the release of the recording is Vidal Doble, a long-time MIG21 operative who has been in ISAFP custody since June. Last week, Doble’s girlfriend, Marietta Santos, testified at the Senate to say that Doble had told her about the wiretapping done on Garcillano by his 14-man unit. She also said she had seen the room where the bugging was done.

She likewise revealed that Doble had sold the tapes to Ong for P2 million. Her story confirms the reporting that has been done on this issue by the PCIJ, Newsbreak and the Inquirer.

“Doble was always broke,” says an intelligence officer who knows him well. “He has two mistresses. He was always short. He couldn’t even afford merienda. Most of the time he had only P20 or P50 in his wallet.”

Apparently, Ong, who has close connections to the Estrada camp, arranged the payoff using money that presumably came from the former president. Ong himself got wind of the tapes through Lito Santiago, his driver, who was a friend of Doble’s. Some intelligence sources say that Doble spilled out information on the tapes in a drinking spree with Santiago, who then told his boss.

The payoff, as Santos later confirmed, took place in February at the Century Imperial Hotel in Quezon City. Doble, she said, later gave P200,000 to Santiago, P200,000 to his brother and P70,000 to her.

He apparently blew the rest very fast. “He went on vacation for two weeks,” says an intelligence operative. “When he returned, he had lots of money and gold jewelry. He was already wearing a bracelet and a necklace.”

Newsbreak, however, doubts whether Doble was acting on his own. So far, there is no evidence of whether other people up the chain in ISAFP are involved, and what, if any, their motives were in encouraging Doble to make the recording public.

The military was supposed to have conducted its own investigation of the wiretapping but none of its findings have been made public. In June, the entire MIG21 was placed under ISAFP custody. The unit, which was led by Army Lt. Col. Pedro Sumayo Jr. during the elections, was supposed to have been under investigation by the armed forces since June, when the tapes were leaked to the public. But up to now, no one is saying what, if any, they’ve found out.

The Abalos Comelec: A legacy of scandals and eroded credibility

The Abalos Comelec: A legacy of scandals and eroded credibility
Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | October 3, 2007 at 3:28 pm


BENJAMIN Abalos Sr.’s decision to resign from the Commission on Elections, many believe, can only herald auspicious times for the constitutionally mandated guardian of the ballot. After all, the poll body’s credibility, integrity and independence had suffered the most under his leadership.

In the words of an election official who has seen poll commissioners come and go since 1998, Abalos “came and took away everything: word of honor, integrity, independence, credibility. He left no legacy except resignation to free the Comelec from the stigma of his name and fight his accusers with his own face.”

That may be a harsh assessment, but to begin with, Abalos, a former Mandaluyong judge and mayor, and head of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, came to the Comelec in the most unusual of circumstances. He was appointed its chairman despite being a politician with acknowledged ties to the First Family, and no less a card-carrying member of the dominant political party, Lakas, at the time.

To be fair though, Abalos was not the only controversial Comelec official appointed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. There were, of course, her two ad interim commissioners who did not get congressional confirmation: Manuel Barcelona Jr. and Virgilio Garcillano, the Marcos-era election director accused of masterminding dagdag-bawas operations in Mindanao and eventual presidential phone pal of the “Hello, Garci” tapes infamy.

Yet while the Comelec in the post-Edsa years has been no stranger to adverse public perception owing to allegations of corruption, incompetence, and partisanship, it was during Abalos’s watch that the poll body’s credibility had suffered a sharp decline. Under Abalos, the Comelec registered -17 (March 2006) and -10 (September 2006) net trust ratings from a high of +49 (February 2004) in surveys done by the Social Weather Stations.

It was also Abalos who had the lowest net trust rating among the post-Marcos Comelec chiefs: -7 in January 2004 and -10 in April 2004. Bernardo Pardo and Alfredo Benipayo only had -4 trust ratings during their terms.

Pulse Asia’s survey this August put Abalos’s net trust rating at -10 (24 percent trust and 34 percent distrust ratings). Prior to the 2007 midterm elections, he had a -1 net trust rating (39 percent trust and 40 percent distrust ratings) in the April 2007 survey. As MMDA chairman, he had a better net approval rating of +17 in Pulse Asia’s 2001 survey of Cabinet officials.

The public’s low regard and distrust of the Abalos Comelec can only be attributed to the scandals that tainted his incumbency. In the aftermath of the “Hello, Garci” scandal, a PCIJ report cited the glaring “mistakes” of the poll body that have run into billions of taxpayers’ money. The list includes the election modernization program that the Abalos Comelec bungled, resulting in P2.3 billion going to waste — P1.3 billion for the contract to purchase vote-counting machines that the Supreme Court invalidated, and another P1 billion for the voters validation system which was suspended in December 2003 in the absence of any budgetary allocation.

While the Comelec even during Christian Monsod’s time has been unable to insulate itself from the politics of accommodation, it got worse under Abalos. Some election officials rue how their professionalism and their being career officials suffered with the promotion of politicos and the corrupt during Abalos’s term. An obvious case in point, of course, is the present line-up of regional directors and assistant directors, which is a virtual who’s who of those who were implicated in the 2004 electoral fraud allegedly engineered by Malacañang to ensure Arroyo’s victory in the presidential polls.

The Comelec did not even bother to conduct a thorough investigation of the serious allegations, and even promoted these poll officials. So to no one’s surprise, the results of the 2007 midterm polls were, to a large extent, a repeat of the 2004 elections with the same officials implicated in voting results manipulation, particularly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. (see the PCIJ’s reports on the 2007 elections)

That is why electoral reform advocates have understandably expressed optimism that the Comelec will be able to start rebuilding its credibility with Abalos finally gone.

But there is a catch there, one that Monsod is correct to remind the ecstatic public. The former Comelec chief, who served during the Aquino administration and enjoyed consistent high satisfaction ratings, has always blamed the appointing power and Congress for contributing to the Comelec’s fall from grace — by appointing and confirming commissioners who serve their own agenda.

Any rebuilding of the Comelec, Monsod says, will only be as good as the appointments to be made by the President. “Now it is up to (her) to help in that rebuilding with quality appointments.”

That, however, begs this crucial question: Can Arroyo be trusted not to politicize the appointments of Comelec commissioners?

Arroyo"s Legitimacy: An Issue that Simply Won't Go Away

Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | November 29, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Filed under: 2004 Electoral Fraud, Gloriagate, Arroyo Impeachment, Governance, In the News

(UPDATED) “THE die is cast,” so declared Brigadier General Danilo Lim, claiming that now is the time to “end the sufferings and miseries inflicted upon us by the illegitimate Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government and start a new life and a new Philippines.”

Lim read from a statement, contents of which echoed his aborted supposed withdrawal of support from the Arroyo government on February 24, 2006 during a protest march commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first people power revolt. For that “act of destabilization,” the bemedalled erstwhile chief of the Army’s 1st Scout Ranger Regiment has since been facing court martial proceedings.

Early this afternoon, Lim issued the same call to “patriotic officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police” as constitutionally mandated protectors of the people and the State, urging them to take the “fateful step of removing Arroyo from the presidency and undertake the formation of a new government.”

Read Lim’s statement here.
Lim had holed himself up starting around noon at the posh Manila Peninsula hotel in Makati City, together with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and Magdalo soldiers facing coup d’etat charges for the short-lived mutiny at the Oakwood Premier Apartments in 2003. Earlier, Lim, Trillanes and their co-accused soldiers had walked out, along with their guards, of their scheduled hearing at the Makati regional trial court. Braving rains, they later marched on Ayala Avenue, joined by a handful of civilian supporters that included former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr., Bishop Emeritus Julio Labayen of the Prelature of Infanta, and former University of the Philippines president Francisco Nemenzo Jr.

But two hours after the lapse of the 3 p.m. deadline issued by the police, the standoff was over as SWAT and Special Action Forces operatives began firing teargas canisters around the hotel to forcefully enforce the arrest warrant against Lim, Trillanes, and the Magdalo soldiers. They were later brought to Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan to face sedition, even possibly, rebellion charges.

Arroyo, charged Lim, had occupied the presidency under a questionable mandate. “She stole the presidency from President Joseph Ejercito Estrada through unconstitutional and deceitful means, and later, manipulated the results of the 2004 elections to perpetuate herself in power.”

It has not helped that efforts to resolve the legitimacy issue through the normal electoral, judicial and congressional processes have been constantly frustrated at every turn by what Lim referred to as Arroyo’s “use of naked power.” He cited the issuance of executive proclamations as EO 464, and the “sheer weight of numbers to paralyze the impeachment process — procured at the people’s great expense.”

Since 2005, impeachment complaints have been filed against Arroyo for the numerous allegations of government corruption, electoral fraud as evidenced in the “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal, and the killings of activists and journalists. The impeachment complaints though — including one recently filed charging Arroyo of complicity in the bribery-tainted national broadband network (NBN) deal and the distribution of “cash gifts” to congressmen and provincial governors in Malacañang — have all been summarily trashed on the strength of an overwhelming number of pro-administration legislators in the House of Representatives.

All those implicated in the Garci recordings — from military generals to Commission on Elections officials — have been absolved by non-transparent investigations whose findings were never made public, like the Mayuga report. On the contrary, the Garci tapes’ cast of characters even got rewarded with juicy promotions (read here, here, here and here).

As Lim also mentioned, the Arroyo administration has either blocked or sat on investigations of alleged cases of corruption and wrongdoing in government, among them the following:

the P728-million fertilizer funds scam involving former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn ‘Jocjoc’ Bolante;
bribery in the IMPSA contract involving former justice secretary Hernando ‘Nani’ Perez;
“Jose Pidal” and the jueteng scandals;
overpriced North Rail project;
Venable and other multi-million lobby contracts;
unresolved extrajudicial killings of activists, journalists and members of the judiciary.
The Senate blue ribbon committee’s investigation into allegations of bribery and overprice in the cancelled NBN project has also had to contend with the Arroyo government’s invocation of executive privilege. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita even issued a gag order to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) not to release to the Senate committee NBN documents as the minutes of meetings held by the Special Joint Investment Coordinating Committee (ICC) and the joint NEDA Board and ICC, and the project’s evaluation report.

To this day, no case has been filed against Bolante (who remains in detention in the U.S. for an immigration case) despite a Senate investigation last year that recommended that he be tried for plunder. Though the Ombudsman finally recommended the filing of graft charges against Perez early this year, nothing has been heard of the case since then.

Though Lim, Trillanes and the Magdalo soldiers are to be faulted for another exercise in “adventurism,” one which however was not like the aborted military “withdrawal of support” in 2006 and the Oakwood mutiny in 2003, the roots of military restiveness — corrupt and unaccountable governance — have not been addressed with the quick resolution of the Manila Peninsula crisis.

Indeed, as Gen. Lim remarked, though regrettably, there does remain “unfinished business” here.

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brigadier general danilo lim, corruption, gloria macapagal arroyo, impeachment complaints, magdalo soldiers, philippines, philippine national police, senator antonio trillanes iv
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 and is filed under 2004 Electoral