Lanao Comelec official: If vote was rigged, kill me

The election supervisor of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Lanao del Sur yesterday disputed the testimony of witnesses who claimed that massive fraud in the 2004 elections led to President Arroyo’s victory.

Comelec director Rey Sumalipao belied the claims of Hadji Abdullah Daligdig, provincial chairman of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), that the late movie star Fernando Poe Jr. was cheated in last year’s polls.

"There were documents and figures presented, as I said, where, if all election returns were received, you could say the figures don’t tally with the CoCs (certificates of canvas)," Sumalipao said.

Sumalipao made his statement at the resumption of the hearings of the Senate committee on defense and security on the controversial "Hello, Garci" tapes.

"(What) I’m saying is get all the results from the CoCs of the municipalities then compare them with the results submitted to the Senate," Sumalipao said. "If there was vote shaving and padding, kill me."

At the start of the hearing, Daligdig marked the precincts where Mrs. Arroyo won by a large margin, while other presidential bets — Poe, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the late former Sen. Raul Roco and Jesus is Lord (JIL) leader Bro. Eddie Villanueva — reportedly received either no votes or a suspiciously low vote count.

Daligdig said his province mate and friend, Col. Guminto Ferino of Task Force Ranao, tried to convince him not to expose the discrepancies in the election returns and the certificates of canvass, promising him "good things" would come once Mrs. Arroyo won reelection.

Ferino has not been promoted to general, as he had been promised, for his role in the elections, Daligdig testified.

Senate defense and national security committee chairman Sen. Rodolfo Biazon was disappointed that Judge Nagamura Moner of the Shari’a court of Wao Bumbaran was suddenly unavailable for today’s hearings.

Moner submitted his written testimony to Biazon’s committee early this week, bolstering the claims of Daligdig and retired Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani that there was indeed massive election fraud in the last polls.

Lawyer Ruel Pulido, who assisted Moner in submitting his requirements to the Senate committee, was surprised that his client suddenly stopped communicating with him last Wednesday, on the eve of the hearing.

Pulido said he had to terminate his service with Moner after Moner refused to take his calls. "They were supposed to be one group," Pulido said at the hearing, where he assisted Daligdig.

He said Moner’s written statement would have no impact on the inquiry unless Moner personally attests to it during the hearing.

Without Moner’s personal appearance before the Senate the affidavit has no significant meaning, Pulido said.

Biazon said he saw a trail of major witnesses suddenly "disappearing" when summoned to the Senate inquiries, particularly on jueteng, wiretapping and the fertilizer fund scam.

Moner’s testimony was deemed crucial because he supposedly traveled around Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Sultan Kudarat and Tawi-Tawi from May 14 to 17 to distribute what was allegedly money supplied by First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo to his men, as reported by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

Quoting interviews with witnesses, the PCIJ said in its report that Moner’s men were tasked to deliver these funds to election officers as payment for reversing the CoCs.

According to Michaelangelo Zuce, who testified in the Senate last August, the Lanao del Sur votes were crucial to the administration. Zuce is the nephew of former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who has since disappeared. Garcillano’s voice was reportedly caught in a wiretapped conversation with Mrs. Arroyo, audiotapes of which came to be known as the "Hello, Garci" tapes.

The PCIJ said in its reports that the votes were needed to offset Poe’s great lead in Misamis Oriental, where the action star was ahead of Mrs. Arroyo by as much as 70,000 votes.

Sumalipao said Daligdig had only limited information on the election results because he did not have a majority of the election returns for the entire province.

"Not all the election returns were received," Sumalipao said. "It never tallied with the CoCs. For example, if there were 50 election returns, there should also be 50 CoCs.

"Daligdig said he could not get them and he is basing his presentation only on partial figures," he said.

Sumalipao said "the bottom line is that Daligdig was lying... with that presentation and with that limited information, he was lying."

He also said Daligdig did not bring the alleged discrepancies to his attention so he could initiate an investigation.

Namfrel chairman Jose Concepcion, who was also at the hearing, contradicted Daligdig’s testimony that the Namfrel ignored his allegations of election fraud.

"We did not ignore Daligdig," Concepcion said

But Daligdig said Concepcion’s apparent lack of interest, "prompted me to desist in the turnover of the voluminous election returns to Namfrel."

Concepcion accused Daligdig of engaging in partisan politics after Daligdig attended a press conference of the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) in June.

Daligdig said Concepcion resorted to politicking by apparently supporting the administration.

"I resent that allegation," Concepcion said, reiterating that Daligidig did not give the Namfrel a copy of the election returns in question.

During a previous Senate hearing, Sumalipao confirmed Zuce’s testimony that he had been present at a meeting of election officers in January at the Grand Boulevard Hotel in Manila, but belied Zuce’s claims the election fraud operations were allegedly planned, and that payola was given at that meeting: "What Zuce is saying is wrong. It is the opposite. Wrong. He was the one who sought the meeting."

Opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Sumalipao was also lying "because initially he denied that he ever met Mr. Zuce in a gathering... but eventually he admitted that, indeed, he met with them, and then now when confronted with the details of that meeting, (his) reaction was to deny."

"I told the chairman to invite Zuce and have him confront Mr. Sumalipao. If we prove that he is indeed lying, cite him (for) contempt, and place him under custody," Lacson said.

Lacson said Daligdig was the second person to testify that the "Hello, Garci" recordings are authentic.

Daligdig repeated his earlier statements that the 2004 presidential elections were the "worst and dirtiest" of the five polls he monitored in Lanao del Sur.

Daligdig’s suspicions were confirmed by two members of the Lanao del Sur Unity Movement, then headed by Moner. Moner founded the movement and launched it in April 2004, Daligdig said.

Meanwhile, the First Gentleman’s lawyer said two other witnesses presented by the opposition in the hearings were "graduates of the opposition’s ‘Philippine Witness Academy.’"

"We thought the ‘Witness Academy’ had already closed, but their enrollment is still ongoing in the second semester," lawyer Jesus Santos said. "It’s saddening that our senators are providing these scholars of deception a venue to unfairly hit the administration."

Santos said it was very clear that witnesses Lomala Macadaub and Wahab Batugan were being used by the opposition to vilify Mr. Arroyo and the administration.

He said the affidavit executed by Macadaub and Batugan on Nov. 15 confirmed suspicions that they gave false statements during an interview aired on television on Oct. 20.

Based on their joint affidavit, the two said that a few days after the airing of their testimony, Pulido, a lawyer identified with the opposition, enticed them to testify and reiterate their previous false statements before the Senate hearing for a reward that would be finalized in Manila.

"Our question now is this," Santos said. "How much was paid to Macadaub and Batugan to lie before the whole nation and who paid them to do so?"