Retired Comelec crook back in chairman’s office

President Noynoy Aquino’s midnight nomination of a childhood friend to the Supreme Court is in bad taste. He is aping his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s shameless raising of her top aide as Chief Justice in the waning weeks of her tenure. That was the main reason why P-Noy had the guy impeached in 2012.

Benjamin Caguioa was a classmate of P-Noy from elementary to high school to college. Caguioa went on to law school, became P-Noy’s presidential chief legal counsel, and is now acting Secretary of Justice.

It is every lawyer’s dream to become justice of the Supreme Court. But being such close friends, P-Noy and Caguioa should have restrained themselves. The former would have done better than to succumb to the temptation of inserting a “proven loyalist” in the High Tribunal. The latter should have declined the nomination.

Now the Judicial and Bar Council would feel compelled to suit P-Noy by including Caguioa in its short list of endorsees to the vacant post. That again would be in bad taste for the supposedly independent constitutional body.

Interviewing Caguioa for the job, the JBC asked what he thought of the presidential pork barrel, the Disbursement Acceleration Program. It could have been a trick question, for the SC had illegalized the P177-billion budgetary allocation in 2013, and called for criminal charges against the perpetrators.

Caguioa replied that P-Noy was not criminally liable because blah-blah-blah. Then he hastened to add that he would, of course, be independent if and when the question is thrown to the SC for adjudication.

Caguioa’s better answer should have been: “I will inhibit myself from participating in any case for or against my ex-classmate and superior at the executive branch, so it is pointless to answer the question.” But then, he did answer the question, with an afterthought of needing to be a free thinker. His slip already showed.

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There’s now an ethics committee to check abuse of authority at the Comelec. Chairman Andres Bautista proudly proclaimed this last week in the wake of his tiff with Comm. Rowena Guanzon. The latter had committed a procedural lapse of filing a pleading before the Supreme Court without first clearing the contents with Bautista.

The worth of the new good-conduct body should be tested at once. This can be done by tasking it with the review of Bautista’s office no less. For, complaints are mounting of stink emanating from there. Failure to come up with credible answers would ruin the image of the election agency. Its ability to conduct an honest election would be put in serious doubt.

Recurrent are the murmured extortions from suppliers by a retired Comelec officer, whom Bautista recently rehired as consultant. Why Bautista resurrected the ex-officer is a big question mark at the Comelec, since the latter was involved in several rackets in 2003-2013.

Modus operandi: Allegedly in behalf of Bautista, the ex-officer approaches winners of Comelec biddings for goods and services of Election 2016. He’d tell them that, for the contracts actually to be awarded, they must “plow back” 25 percent of the amount. If not, a way would be found to disqualify them, and the next best bidder will be propositioned.

There’s a common breakdown being whispered to the extortion victims: ten percent to the Chairman, five percent to the Bids and Awards Committee, another five to the implementing department director, and the last five “for the boys.”

Bautista should know the ex-officer. He’s the guy he had authorized last Oct. to spend P500,000 for “meals and snacks” at the Comelec head office. That was on the last three of the five-day filing of certificates of candidacy for national positions.

Among the scams the ex-officer was involved in were the:

• P1.2-billion purchase in 2003 of defective voting machines and inexistent software from Mega Pacific Consortium, during the tenure of Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos. The Supreme Court had ordered the payee and payers of the anomalous deal to return the money (see http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2004/jan2004/159139.htm);

• P45-million payment, sneakily on the first workday of the year, to a long defunct printing shop. To cover the trail, the ex-officer made the incriminating documents disappear two weeks later (see http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/12082/comelec-pays-defunct-printer-p45m); and

• P20-million unconstitutional no-audit spying in 2013 on critics of the Comelec and its anomalous precinct count optical scanners, or PCOS. The Comelec under Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. was then defrauding the electorate via the opaque automation system from Venezuelan Smartmatic Corp., but made it look like the critics were attempting a technical sabotage (see http://www.manilatimes.net/election-watchdog-accuses-comelec-of-spying-on-critics/15309).

Another recurrent grumble is the mulcting of P2.5 million to P5 million to be accredited in the party-list voting. Over 130 such parties already have been certified. Only a handful – the most influential because connected to religious sects, national parties, or armed groups – have been exempted from extortion. The overwhelming majority has had to pay up – so one can just imagine how huge the racket is.

Modus operandi: another very high Comelec officer screens the parties that have paid up, purportedly for endorsement to the Chairman. The latter then secures the en banc’s approval for accreditation.

The P2.5 million-P5 million is just the “entrance fee.” There’s a separate P15-million “price to pay for victory” – P10 million if with an “early-bird discount.” That party-list racket has been prevalent since the tenures of Comelec chairmen Jose Melo and Brillantes.

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