Comelec ignored theft of ballots

A big news item jolted voters last March 31. Comelec Commissioner Resurreccion Borra revealed that security personnel had caught a casual employee stealing newly-printed ballots. Only four ballots were taken from the National Printing Office a week before - not enough to alter election results. But Borra warned that had the ballots been reproduced by the tens of thousands, these could be used for massive cheating in the May local and congressional elections. He declined to identify the culprit, but said the guy was assigned to the election body’s printing committee headed by Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco.

The story prompted media commentaries for Tancangco to resign. More so since days later on April 4, the Lakas ruling party revealed that Tony Galang, another Comelec hireling assigned to Tancangco’s group, had tried to sell to its printing watcher an uncut sheet of two ballots.

The furor over the two incidents has since died down. Tancangco has not resigned. A review of the now public documents on the cases not only clears Tancangco but also raises questions about how some Comelec officials treated the matter. The papers show that it was Tancangco who in fact caught the first thief, though the case seems to have been covered up.

On the afternoon of March 30 when Borra went to the press with his story, the seven commissioners had just ended a long en banc session. One of the urgent matters discussed was the filing of criminal charges against Zobair Aguam Amerol for stealing the four ballots, plus dismissal without pay. A resolution was prepared based on an investigation by Tancangco. It narrated the incident at 5 a.m. of March 12, when Amerol, in the presence of fellow-employee Eric Domingo, took the four serial-numbered ballots from a stack intended for the town of Tagaloan, Lanao del Sur. (Amerol is from nearby Ganassi.) Domingo did not stop Amerol, but ran to another employee Michael de Leon, who in turn reported the theft to Tancangco’s office. Tancangco swiftly dispatched her committee deputy to investigate. On March 15, still another employee Ernesto Galing stepped forward with the four ballots and told their supervisor that Amerol had handed them to him. Cecilia Fernandez of the Comelec legal department, a former fiscal of 32 years, took the testimonies of all the witnesses in front of Amerol. She then advised the accused to return the next day with a lawyer to present his side. Amerol never showed up and has ignored all summonses.

Tancangco passed around affidavits of the witnesses during their March 30 session. Someone noted that Amerol’s middle name was also the surname of Comelec executive director Mamasapunod Aguam, Borra’s deputy when he held the same post for years. Chairman Alfredo Benipayo called for votes. The commissioners unanimously adopted Tancangco’s recommendation to dismiss and indict Amerol. While Borra assented, he wrote in a reservation: "Due process to be observed." He then went to the press to link an unnamed thief to Tancangco.

Tancangco was surprised the next day with reports insinuating that she had a hand in the ballot theft, not its investigation. A couple of radio stations phoned her for her side. She identified Amerol as a nephew of the Comelec executive director. She also said the culprit had worked as casual employee for printing since 1996, and was recommended to her by Patrick Marohom of the Comelec finance department.

Aguam was furious. He too went to the press, claiming that only days before, Tancangco had tried to sneak out of another printing press two plates of Comelec’s election returns. Media commentators again raised a howl. Election returns bore no secret markings. If the plates fell into the wrong hands, they could be used for dagdag-bawas (vote padding-shaving). Tancangco definitely had to go, they chorused.

Tables were being turned, but Tancangco was too stunned to react. The furor drowned her out. Of course, she did try to bring out the plates – she had told the commissioners this in an earlier memo – but only to show them that the private printer was goofing on the job. She had in fact destroyed the plates, along with seven others, because of production errors. She merely needed proof to bolster her earlier charge that the printer was an overpricing yet underperforming suki from whom Comelec racketeers had long been taking kickbacks. When the printer, invoking security rules, didn’t let her bring out the destroyed plates, she made photocopies, which she showed to the commission. But Aguam’s tale made her look like she, not the printer, was at fault.

Commissioner Mehol Sadain had wanted to hold his tongue but couldn’t. On April 3, he fired off a memo to his colleagues about how one of them leaked to the press the pending resolution on Amerol – a violation of Comelec rules and distortion of facts. He said that Borra’s "accusatory" interviews put the commission in a bad light, more so since the latter knew all along that Amerol was not a kin of Tancangco, that hiring of casuals was not Tancangco’s job unlike that of confidential aides, and that Tancangco herself had filed the administrative case against the culprit. Mehol also took Borra to task for claiming that Amerol was not given an opportunity to defend himself. (Borra even had a handwritten note to this effect attached to the signed resolution, but the public never knew.) In closing Mehol twitted Aguam for maligning Tancangco. He said Aguam knew all along the circumstances behind the commissioner’s desire to bring the destroyed plates of election returns to the head office.

All this was buried by succeeding events. On April 4, Lakas went to town with its charge that Galang had tried to sell another set of two ballots to its printing press watcher. Tancangco never was told of the incident; she would have had the casual employee charged and dismissed like Amerol. The ruling party’s call for her to resign merited news space.

On April 5 Benipayo issued a memo designating Commissioner Florentino Tuazon as his personal representative in charge of printing. The memo in effect took the printing committee out of Tancangco’s hands. She protested, stating that all committee assignments had to be decided by the commission en banc, not by the chairman alone. She wanted to finish her task of proving that certain printers had long been overpricing them but were forced to come clean only when she threatened to have all jobs done by government agencies.

Tuazon nonetheless took over the two theft cases. He immediately sued Galang for violating the Omnibus Election Code. Amerol to this day has not been indicted, however.

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Now which is which? Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena swears he has no interest in the position of Justice Anacleto Badoy as chairman of the Sandiganbayan third division that’s hearing Joseph Estrada’s plunder case. He says that under their rules, should Badoy resign or retire, the most senior division member (Justice Teresita de Castro) gets first crack at it.

That’s a lie, Badoy says. What Garchitorena is saying is a revision of the rule that justices had asked for in a series of meetings with him. But the old rule has not been amended, Badoy maintains. It remains the same, that is, that should he leave, the most senior of division heads gets first crack. And that’s Garchitorena.

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