Loren’s fight for truth

The "victor" in the "Hello Garci" tapes seems to be Loren Legarda, a vice-presidential candidate in the elections held last year. Why do I call her victor – when she lost to now Vice-President Noli de Castro, and she is spending millions just to have ballots she says were cast in her favor, but counted as Noli’s? Simple.

With President Macapagal-Arroyo’s admission that she had had a lapse of judgment by inquiring from Comelec official Virgilio Garcillano about the voting situation in certain parts of Mindanao, Loren acquired much-needed ammunition in her fight for "truth."

Tuesday she said at the Bulong Pulungan sa Westin Philippine Plaza that the President’s admission of lapsed judgment was an admission that massive fraud and cheating had occurred in the elections.

She was a victim, she said, of "dagdag-bawas," an operation widely believed to be characteristic of Philippine elections – whether on the national, provincial, local, and even barangay levels. Votes are taken away from a candidate and added to the votes of the other candidate.

She was a victim, too, of shabby treatment in Congress. She and presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. had complained of having been cheated, but all they got from the legislators were the words, "Noted, noted, noted." Period.

Movie actor Fernando Poe died, but the fire in Loren refuses to die. That is characteristic of her, as she is the type who will not give up if she thinks she’s in the right. Mind you, Loren is the kind that people love to hate because, they say, she’s too ambitious. (But who isn’t ambitious in the political field?) And then she happens to be smart and good-looking, and she has money, and her art collection in a fabulous house in Forbes Park makes her enemies jealous.

Money Loren has, and some of it is coming from friends and relations who are supporting her in her fight for the truth, which simply means, for ballot boxes to be pried open to show that she is the rightful winner in the vice-presidential election.

Noli de Castro had been proclaimed as winner on the basis of 15,100,431 votes counted in his favor. Loren got 14,218,709 votes. That’s a difference of 881,722 votes. Not a big difference. Did not Noli’s appointed dagdag-bawas hirelings do their job?

That margin is about to be demolished, says Loren, who stays cool under pressure. The other day she deposited P4,084,500 with the Supreme Court in its capacity as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to fund the recount of ballots and the re-tabulation and re-computation of 2004 election returns (ERS) and Certificates of Canvass for the vice-presidency in four pilot provinces. These provinces are Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, and Cebu.

She appealed to the PET to facilitate the recounting of the ballots, the re-computation of the ERs and the revision of the COCs, "in order to establish as quickly as possible the truth about the elections and thus reestablish the people’s faith and trust in government."

She said, "I am doing this not for myself but for the people who deserve no less than the truth and nothing but the truth, and who are entitled to be led by those they have freely and truly chosen to be their leaders. Unless this matter is put to rest, there would be no stability in our country."

Of the P4.08 million deposit she made, P2.2 million represented partial cash deposit for returns from protested precincts in the province of Cebu, while the remaining P1,884,500 would be for the re-tabulation of votes cast in 3,769 precincts in the Mindanao provinces named in her protest. The "Hello Garci" tapes contain conversations between President Macapagal-Arroyo and Garcillano, mentioning mostly the Mindanao provinces were the alleged massive "dagdag-bawas" (add-subtract) frauds took place. These are Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte and Surigao del Sur.

In all, she has to pay P6,646,500 for a recount of election results in all of the 13,293 precincts in Cebu.

At the Bulong Pulungan, and most everywhere where she has the opportunity, Loren’s hired high-powered public relations firm showed how the cheating was done by video.

In Balindong, Lanao del Sur, election returns showed Loren had gotten 4,420 votes, in the precincts, but when the ballot boxes were taken to the municipal then provincial Comelec sites and Statements of Votes (SOVs) and Certificates of Canvas (COCs) were tabulated, she only got 1,390 votes – a difference of 3,030 votes. Her opponent got 1,858 ERrs, but in the SOV/COC, 5,826 were credited to him.

Loren told Bulong Pulungan, with the glaring dagdag-bawas equation on the screen, that in six pilot provinces (add Pampanga and Maguindanao), she won over Noli. "Dito lang, panalo na siya," said Loren’s PR man, who makes Loren accessible to media. Maybe Noli does not know it, but he has a cordon sanitaire that refuses to give media time to interview their boss.

Loren is certain she had won. That the recounting and re-computing and re-tabulating will be taking place – with haste, please, says Loren – in the Supreme Court, with the whole nation watching, Noli must be ready to run for his money.

Loren wants the PET to do its job swiftly. For if President Macapagal-Arroyo is forced to step down, Noli will go up to take her place. And Loren believes she should be the one.

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Henry Joseph V. Sarmiento, a student of UP Los Baños, decries the lack of support for women’s health and rights in his letter responding to my column on the closure of the Women’s Health Care Foundation clinic in Manila because it promoted the use of artificial contraception which is opposed by Manila City Mayor Lito Atienza. Here are parts of Henry’s letter:

"Your column about the closure of the Women’s Health Care Foundation operation in Baseco is another proof that reproductive health for women is not given any importance by politicians seeking the support of the church whose stand on reproductive health is as outdated as its dogma that they are still trying to force upon us.

"It saddens me that this action, along with the administration’s stand on preventing divorce in the country and preventing failed marriages to end and give life back to couples who are better off without each other, is happening under the watch of a female president. Reproductive health and the divorce bill are actions that are obviously meant to support and empower women in the country, but alas this country is still governed by men. Men who don’t want to be bothered by the costs and the hassles of wearing a condom or buying a pill or losing their wives and half of their riches just because they were caught cheating or beating their wives for their sick pleasures are easily supported by the administration run by a woman, simply because these are the scenarios she faces only in books or on television.

"Even with the support of the international community, reproductive health in the country has not been successful because of backward thinking and politics. Politician are still after the support of the church which believes that abstinence is the solution. Even priests fail to abstain from sexual intercourse – and they expect the average man with a wife to practice abstinence!"

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