Gov’t urged to spare no one in poll cheating

The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) on Sunday urged the government to go not just after Lintang Bedol but all those who had a hand in the purported “mega cheating” in the 2004 and 2007 elections.

“Bedol should be charged and once proven guilty, penalized,” said Henrietta de Villa, the chair of the Church-based poll watchdog. “But the Commission on Elections [Comelec] and the government should not stop with [him],” she told reporters.

A former poll supervisor in Maguindanao, Bedol, who went into hiding after ignoring summons to appear in a Comelec inquiry in 2007, last week appeared in a TV interview in what supporters of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said was part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit the former President.

Bedol remains in hiding. In an interview with ABS-CBN, he accused Arroyo of engineering vote-shaving and vote-padding in the balloting in 2004 and 2007. The interview was aired a day after suspended Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan, of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), accused Arroyo of election irregularities and corruption in a series of exposés.

The Comelec has slapped Bedol with four criminal cases—for indirect contempt and violations of the Omnibus Election Code, the Revised Penal Code and the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. The commission also issued an arrest warrant against him on Oct. 22, 2007.

“The government should run after all those who had a hand in the mega cheating in the two elections,” De Villa said. “This could be a breakthrough for clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful elections the PPCRV and all responsible citizens have been struggling for.”

Uncovering the truth during those two elections and a clean balloting in general, she said, had been a longstanding clamor by the public, not only by politicians involved.

Sen. Loren Legarda on Sunday said she still had copies of the 2004 election returns (ERs) submitted to the Supreme Court to prove that votes were stolen from her and presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr.

“I still have the ERs,” she said in an interview. “I’m still interested in the details (of how the cheating was done), although I already know that it happened… I still want to help.”

“All the documents are still with me. Although it is unclear to me what legal process would be involved, still we cannot bring back FPJ,” she said, referring to the 2004 opposition standard-bearer by his initials.

Poe and Legarda ran as the candidates for president and vice president of Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) seven years ago.

“The ERs showed that FPJ and I won. However, when the results of the ERs were summed up in the certificates of canvass, these COCs reflected different totals,” Legarda said. With a report from Cathy Yamsuan