Granting Defensor’s wish

I’m glad Mike Defensor is challenging uniformed men who knew of or were used in rigging of the 2004 elections to come out and present proof.

This might yet provoke police officers who participated in the manufacturing of fake election returns for Gloria Arroyo and the military officers who have copies of the photos of the operations to come out in the open.

The pictures are in the latest (March 27, 2006) issue of News-break magazine.

Last year (Sept. 12, 2005), Newsbreak came out with an expose about the manufacturing of some 6,000 ERs of the May 10, 2004 elections to replace the ones being kept at the Batasan building which do not match the tampered certificates of canvass which were the basis of Gloria Arroyo’s hasty proclamation as winner.

Remember the time during the canvassing by the joint congressional committee of the votes cast for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates when the minority, led by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, Sen. Tessie Oreta, Rep. Francis Escudero, tried to have the ballot boxes containing the ERs opened but were struck down by Sen. Francis Pangilinan and then Rep. (now Justice Secretary) Raul Gonzales with their “Noted, Noted, Noted”?

The reason the minority wanted the ERs examined was because those could have proved that the certificates of canvass and the statement of votes that they were tallying were manufactured.

Remember how the Jose de Venecia Express railroaded the canvassing and proclaimed Arroyo when the whole nation was asleep?

The minority’s explained their refusal to accept the proclamation of Arroyo in a separate report. They said, “On paper, the undersigned are asked, as members of the Senate and House of representatives, to approve flawed canvass. But the reality is that they are asked to join as accomplices to a criminal conspiracy to cheat and defraud the Filipino voter, hatched long before the first election return was manufactured or the first certificate of canvass and statement of vote was tampered with erasures and alterations, in order to inflict on the nation an Arroyo victory through a majority report proclaiming a bogus election tally.”

The “Hello Garci” tapes that were made public by no less than Press Secretary Bunye in June 2005 proved the minority’s allegations to be true. Subsequent testimonies by election operators Michaelangelo Zuce, Namfrel volunteer Lacs Daligdig, and the experience of Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, Col. Alexander Balutan and Capt. Marlon Mendoza supported the revelations in the Hello Garci tapes on the tampering of COCs to make Arroyo appear the winner even if she lost to Fernando Poe Jr. in the actual votes cast.

So, Congress was taken care of and Arroyo was proclaimed. But then FPJ filed a protest before Presidential Electoral Tribunal. That means, the ballot boxes would have to be opened and the ERs would be examined.

Arroyo and her cohorts would have a problem there because the ERs and the COCs do not match. Remember, twice in her conversations with Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, she was worried about ERs that didn’t match with COCs and SOVs and Garcillano blamed Gen. Gabriel Habacon?

Arroyo’s election operators set to work to make the ERs match the COCs. Newsbreak talked to some of the operators. The leader of the operation, they said, was election lawyer Roque Bello, a retired regional director of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in his 60s.

Newsbreak said: “So starting September 2004, or three months after President Arroyo was proclaimed winner, a group hired by the administration reportedly started printing ERs that they intended to fill up and then switch with the genuine ERs that were in some of the ballot boxes being kept in the House of Representatives.

“The target of the operation was ERs from the Muslim Mindanao area and surrounding provinces, where the alleged vote padding was done only in the COCs. Apparently, the ER-switching was meant to fix the records to pass future scrutiny. The figures in the new ERs, when added up, would now be consistent with the totals in the COCs.”

The September article of Newsbreak did not have photos. They were able to get the pictures for their latest issue. The pictures were taken through a cellphone camera.

Newsbreak said: “The ‘corrected’ ERs were brought to the Batasan in four clandestine entries from January to February 2005 to replace the genuine ERs in the ballot boxes that were being held for the possible re-canvassing for Fernando Poe Jr.’s pending election protest then. (Poe died in December 2004, but his protest was dismissed by the Supreme Court only in March 2005, or the month after the Batasan break-in.)

We were told that the ballot boxes with fake ERs were brought to the Batasan escorted by members of Special Action Forces. Bad news for Arroyo: that was documented.

Defensor asked for proof from the soldiers. He will get it.