‘Ghosts’ of 2004 poll fraud haunt Senate halls
By Jonathan de Santos
Monday, August 1, 2011
THE last living victim of alleged poll fraud in 2004 held a press conference Monday to help exorcise “the ghosts of the 2004 elections once again haunting us.”
Senator Loren Legarda, who said she was cheated out of the vice presidency in 2004, said Monday that she can submit evidence and records used in her election protest to the Justice department and the elections commission “to help right a historical wrong.”
“This is something I fought for from 2004 to 2007, for three long painful years. I and my lawyers presented our own pieces of evidence. The truth has been staring us in the face since 2004. The fraud is clear,” she said at a press conference Monday afternoon.
She said allegations of cheating in the 2004 elections still carry weight “because there was no absolute closure in the protest I filed before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).”
The protest was junked on technicalities, she said.
The PET dismissed Legarda’s complaint after she won a seat at the Senate in the 2007 elections and after she failed to deposit P3.9 million to pay for continuing the revision of disputed ballots.
Before she filed her complaint at the PET, she and representatives of running mate Fernando Poe Jr. tried to have election returns (ERs) checked for authenticity.
“They just said ‘noted’ and shut off my microphone,” she said.
Members of both houses of Congress have called for congressional hearings on fresh allegations that surfaced last month of cheating in the 2004 and 2007 elections. But Legarda said Congress already has too much to do.
“I think that with the present leadership, the Commission on Elections and the Department of Justice will be more than capable,” she said.
Legarda, who also ran for vice president in 2010, said her offer to assist the investigation was “not politicking” since she no longer aspires for higher positions.
“As a victim of the fraud of 2004, the only victim alive, it is my duty to help right a historical wrong,” she said. Her running mate, Poe, died in late 2004 with an election protest still pending.
Earlier on Monday, two senators who also tangled with each other during the canvassing of votes in 2004, exchanged sharp words over the alleged fraud.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said at a press conference Monday that it is too late for Senator Francis Pangilinan, then majority leader, to condemn alleged poll fraud that Sotto says he let slide in 2004.
He said it “bothered” him that “those who helped keep the truth from getting out are suddenly pretending to be clean.”
Pangilinan, sitting at the National Board of Canvassers for the presidential elections, was dubbed “Mr. Noted” by supporters of Fernando Poe Jr., who accused incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of poll fraud. This, after he responded to election protests from Poe’s camp with a simple “noted.”
“The general rule is that the canvassing board under our Constitution cannot be the venue to raise the issue of electoral fraud, but Sotto and the others wanted to transform the canvassing board into the electoral tribunal and when the issue of going to the election returns (ERs) is raised by way of a motion 144 times, what is there left for one to do but have the matter noted?” Pangilinan said in a statement Monday.
Sotto, then minority leader and Poe’s campaign manager, said the canvassing board could have checked the ERs since the board could “make its own rules.”
He said the board could have checked for poll fraud before Poe, whose election protest died with him in 2004, filed a complaint with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.
Pangilinan said Sotto “has no moral ascendancy to comment on the issue of fraud for the simple reason that he flip-flopped on the issue and embraced the cheater in the end.” Sotto ran with Arroyo’s Team Unity in the 2007 senatorial elections.
Sotto said that was a party decision by the Nationalist People’s Coalition and that he had asked permission from Poe’s family before running under the administration ticket. “You have to set your facts straight,” he said.
Last week, Pangilinan said he welcomed a joint investigation by the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections on allegations of poll fraud in 2004 and 2007.
“Our role in the canvassing committee in 2004 mandated us to decide on the basis of the evidence available, the rules, and the law. All the evidence now surfacing seven years later was not available then,” he said in a press statement.
Pangilinan added that he called on then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign when the “Hello, Garci” scandal erupted in 2005. (Sunnex)
Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2011/08/01/ghosts-2004-poll-fraud-haunt-senate-halls-170311
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