Cusi denies electoral fraud allegations

MANILA, Philippines - Former airport and Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) general manager Alfonso Cusi yesterday denied allegations about his complicity in the alleged electoral fraud operations of the previous administration.

Cusi appeared before the Senate yesterday to air his side after being implicated on numerous occasions by former Shari’a judge Nagamura Moner as his handler in the rigging of the 2004 presidential elections in favor of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Moner, who was also at the Senate yesterday for the Blue Ribbon and electoral reforms committees’ hearing into the 2004 and 2007 poll fraud issue, has stated on numerous occasions that his good friend Cusi was the one who recruited him as an operator in Mindanao during the 2004 presidential elections.

He said Cusi directed him to ensure Arroyo’s victory in Mindanao and to get in touch with the election officers in the region for this purpose.

He said that at one time he received P3 million in cash from a member of the Presidential Security Group called “Dave,” and he believed the money was sent by his friend Cusi.

Moner said the money was intended for the election officers who were supposed to come out in a press conference stating that there was cheating in the 2004 elections in Mindanao.

After the officers received their share of the P3 million, he said they came out with a statement denying there was any cheating.

Cusi admitted knowing Moner through his brother-in-law Efren Bollozos, who was a director of the PPA.

He said Bollozos introduced the former Shari’a judge to him at his PPA office when the latter went to inform him about the launching of a Lanao Unity Movement for GMA, where members of the opposition from Muslim Mindanao would defect to the Arroyo administration.

Cusi said Moner invited him to attend the meeting and to ask former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo to do the same.

However, he denied all of Moner’s allegations about his role in the poll fraud operations, saying that they were malicious and unfounded.

He said Moner cannot be trusted because of the conflicting statements that he issued before the Senate, the first of which stated that there was no fraud in the 2004 elections.

Moner: Not for the money

However, several doubts have been raised about the credibility of Moner, even if he tried to prove that he was honest, to the point of incriminating himself.

Senate President Pro-Tempore Jinggoy Estrada has criticized Moner for his flip-flopping and for making a fool of the Senate with his conflicting testimonies.

During yesterday’s hearing, Estrada asked him how much money he received that led him to change his testimony about cheating in the 2004 elections.

“Is it safe to say that you helped the candidacy of GMA for the sake of monetary consideration?” Estrada asked Moner, who answered that it was not about money but his reappointment as a judge in 2004, which he said could be revoked by the former president.

However, he admitted that he pocketed some money, P1 million from the estimated P8 million that allegedly passed through his hands while he was working as one of the operators of the previous administration to ensure the victory of Arroyo in Mindanao.

Moner said he was forced to lie before the Senate when he first appeared in 2005 because he feared for the life of his family and would rather face the prospect of going to jail.

Estrada asked Moner who he believed would have won in Mindanao during the 2004 election if no cheating took place.

Moner said that he was certain actor Fernando Poe Jr. would have won by a margin of at least one million votes.

Sumalipao: It’s his word against mine

Former Lanao del Sur provincial election supervisor Rey Sumalipao, on the other hand, denied the allegations of Ansari Alonto, a former consultant of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, who claimed that the results of the presidential elections were not being read out during the canvassing at the provincial capitol.

Alonto claimed that he went to the canvassing area where Sumalipao was the presiding officer and even described the Commission on Elections (Comelec) official as having an “afro” hairdo, which he later on said was somewhat “kinky.”

Sumalipao denied Alonto’s claim that the canvassing for all posts was not being done simultaneously and that he even recorded the entire proceedings on cassette tapes as proof.

He said there were representatives for every candidate there so Alonto’s claim was impossible because it would have been noticed by everyone.

Alonto and Sumalipao engaged in a heated exchange, with both men claiming to be speaking the truth and swearing on the Koran.

Sumalipao said that he was swearing to the truth about what happened in the provincial board of canvassers but could not say the same for the municipal board of canvassers.

However, he admitted that after he heard and saw all of the witnesses that have been coming out claiming there was fraud in 2004, he is inclined to believe that there were irregularities that took place.

Senators Francis Escudero and Teofisto Guingona III asked Sumalipao why he did not even raise an eyebrow when he saw the election returns indicating that Arroyo’s opponent, the late Poe, did not register a single vote in the province.

Sumalipao said he was committed to have a speedy conduct of the canvassing so he had no intention of opening the ballot boxes to go through election returns.

The answer to those questions were given by former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol, who finally spoke about how opponents of the previous administration were targeted to get zero votes in the province.

Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, who along with Senators Panfilo Lacson and then Sen. Benigno Aquino III were said to be the candidates specified by the previous administration to receive zero votes in Maguindanao, asked Bedol who gave the order to alter the results.

Bedol said that it was then Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. who ordered him to take away the votes of the three senators.

However, he said that he came to know that it was former President Arroyo who ordered Ampatuan, but offered no proof to back up his claim.

Bedol said that in some of the municipalities, he was able to witness that some of the municipal certificates of canvass already had erasures before they went to the provincial board of canvassers.

He said that this was easy to do under manual canvassing of votes and that the election supervisors were all aware of the practice.

Asked by Cayetano if there were syndicates within the Comelec and outside that were selling election returns and certificates of canvass, Bedol confirmed that there were.

Mike A: P-Noy persecuting Arroyos

Meanwhile, former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo rued how far the Aquino administration would go just to pin down his family, with the Senate “coddling” suspects in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre.

Arroyo pointed out that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Comelec were already investigating the alleged election fraud but the Senate “has again joined the fray and conducted its own probe.”

“Why the overlapping investigations? Is there an ongoing contest among Palace allies to maximize media exposure of their demonization of the Arroyos?” he said in a text message to The STAR.

He said the Senate hearings “offer a spectacle of rehearsed witnesses whose testimonies are often preposterous.”

“We are in awe of how far this admin is willing to go, even coddling suspected murderers and fugitives from justice just so they could link the Arroyos to crimes they have predetermined,” Arroyo said.

He also challenged Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to charge former Maguindanao official Norie Unas, one of the primary suspects in the massacre.

“Or is his (Unas) non-inclusion (in the massacre charge sheet) part of the sweetheart deal to force him to testify against the Arroyos? Is this the tuwid na daan, Madam Secretary? This is the height of injustice for those who died in the massacre and their suffering families! How many criminals more are they willing to enter a pact with in exchange for a testimony against the Arroyos?” he said.

Raul Lambino, the legal spokesman of former President and now Pampanga Rep. Arroyo, said there was nothing new and substantial that was raised in yesterday’s hearing.

“What is certain is that such Senate hearings are purposely conducted to continue persecuting the Arroyos and vilifying them in public. It is part of the well-orchestrated plan and obsession of the Aquino government to keep pounding on the Arroyos with all forms of accusation in order to divert P-Noy’s incompetence and lackluster administration,” Lambino said.

He said the same issue had been successfully used by some senators to get elected and it is now again being used for similar reasons for the 2013 elections, through free media coverage and publicity.

“Instead of crafting important measures to address the pressing needs of countless Filipinos in poverty, P-Noy and his senate allies are spending scarce government resources to conduct such witch hunts and investigations instead,” Lambino said. – Paolo Romero