Witness fails to link GMA to 2007 poll fraud

MANILA, Philippines - A prosecution witness failed yesterday to directly link former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the alleged cheating in the 2007 elections in Maguindanao.

Susan Cabanban, former municipal election officer of SK Pendatun, Maguindanao, testified during direct examination at the Pasay City Regional Trial Court that the alleged cheating in Maguindanao was orchestrated by provincial and election officials led by poll supervisor Lintang Bedol.

Defense lawyer Ray Montri Santos said Cabanban never mentioned Arroyo as being involved in the cheating.

Cabanban said she was able to keep copies of the original election documents that were tampered and copied to a blank election results form. But the original documents are now missing.

“I lost them, that was a long time ago,” she said.

She also admitted that the original results were never canvassed and the manufactured election documents were the ones submitted to the National Board of Canvassers.

Cabanban also told judge Jesus Mupas that Norie Unas, the former provincial administrator of Maguindanao, was present during a meeting where Comelec officers were told to alter the election results.

In her earlier testimony, Cabanban claimed that a man from the Maguindanao provincial capitol called her and told her that the results of the national elections would be canvassed at the capitol building of the province.

“I did not recognize the voice but out of fear I complied,” she said.

She told the court that the separate submission of the local and national results was irregular because the results should have been canvassed at the same time.

Cabanban was the first of the more than 50 witnesses lined up against Arroyo and her co-accused Bedol and former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. on the alleged cheating in the 2007 midterm elections.

After the hearing, Santos told reporters that the testimony of Cabanban has not proven any tampering of election results as alleged in the charges.

The court had set the cross-examination of Cabanban on March 14.

Graft case against GMA

Defense lawyers grilled national broadband network (NBN) deal whistle-blower Rodolfo Lozada Jr. when he returned to the stand as a prosecution witness in a graft case against Arroyo at the Sandiganbayan yesterday morning.

Arroyo’s lawyers attacked Lozada’s credibility during cross-examination and even used the graft case filed against him by the Office of the Ombudsman to cast doubt on his testimony as a key witness of the prosecution.

“Are you the same Lozada who was arraigned for anti-graft law (violation) yesterday?” Laurence Arroyo, one of Arroyo’s lawyers, asked him.

When Assistant Special Prosecutor Louella Mae Pesquerra stood to object on grounds that the question was irrelevant to the graft case, the defense counsel cited a 1981 Supreme Court ruling about a man who stole a cow worth P50.

The SC ruling on the man who stole a cow worth P50 was used to emphasize an age-old principle that “for you to have credible evidence, that evidence should come from a credible source. Your witness must also be credible.”

The defense counsel told the anti-graft court’s Fourth Division chaired by Associate Justice Gregory Ong that such a person, based on jurisprudence, is “open to great suspicion and doubt.”

He said Lozada was a technical adviser of former National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director-general Romulo Neri who also gave him authority to be the communication line between Neri and officials of China’s ZTE Corp. and other parties of interest in the NBN deal. – With Michael Punongbayan