NOW SHOWING. Senate employees and reporters watch a video presentation detailing how the late Fernando Poe Jr. was allegedly robbed of victory in the 2004 presidential election. LYN RILLON
Malacañang wants to make sure that Virgilio Garcillano could contribute to a cast of whistle-blowers being assembled to pursue possible election sabotage charges against former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“Ayaw namin ma-kuryente (We don’t want to get burned),” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Thursday, reacting to a report that the purported voice behind the 2004 “Hello Garci” scandal had offered to “tell all.”
“So that’s why it’s important for us to assess and evaluate all testimonies that will be offered,” Lacierda said in a news briefing.
Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs Ronald Llamas, who earlier said he had received the feelers from the former election commissioner, on Thursday told the Inquirer: “Unless it’s already clear what he has to say, then we talk… We still have no basis to make a judgment. There has been no conversation, no affidavit and no face-to-face meeting.”
Llamas said the Aquino administration did not want to be caught in a trap where the 74-year-old Garcillano would only mouth what he had already told a congressional inquiry before (See What Went Before on this channel.)
Asked what Garcillano’s emissaries were offering, Llamas said, “That he will tell what he knows about the 2004 election.”
Llamas said there was no conspiracy to bring out whistle-blowers and stage-manage their testimonies against Arroyo. He said there was just an invitation for witnesses, including Garcillano, to tell all.
New confidence
Lacierda said confidence in the Aquino administration must be a factor in the “upsurge” of whistle-blowers willing to finally tell their story.
Last week in TV interviews and unsigned affidavits, former Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and former Maguindanao Election Supervisor Lintang Bedol lodged against Arroyo fresh accusations of corruption and shenanigans in the 2004 and 2007 elections.
Ampatuan is on trial for the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao in 2009. He has offered to turn state witness against his father, former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., and his brother Andal Jr. who, like him, are under detention for multiple murder.
Bedol surfaced on Tuesday after hiding for four years. He is now serving a six-month jail sentence for snubbing a hearing of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in 2007 in connection with fraud in the balloting in Maguindanao that year.
Prescription period
Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. has said that the five-year prescription period for the prosecution of election offenses in the 2004 presidential election had lapsed, but any other associated criminal offenses could be pursued by either the Department of Justice or the Ombudsman.
Raul Lambino, an Arroyo lawyer, had described as “hearsay” recent accusations by Ampatuan and Bedol against the ex-president. He said the parade of whistle-blowers was nothing more than an attempt to boost President Aquino’s declining popularity rating before he makes a “state of no accomplishment” report to Congress on Monday.
In congressional hearings in late 2005, Garcillano, who had disappeared for five months after the Hello Garci scandal broke out, said he had a telephone conversation with Arroyo on May 24, 2004, but pointed out that this was after election returns had been shipped to Manila.
Garcillano also declined to authenticate the voice in the controversial tapes, which Arroyo opponents claimed were evidence the former President stole the vote from movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., who died in December 2004.
Docu-drama video
Sen. Francis Escudero, the spokesperson for Poe during the 2004 presidential election, said that supporters of the late candidate planned to present a video detailing how instructions heard from the tapes were carried out that led to the actor’s defeat.
“The video provides an examination of the instructions given to people and the results, the consequences, the work that happened on the ground after the fact,” Escudero told reporters at the Kapihan sa Senado on Thursday.
The film, presented documentary-style and narrated by a male voice, was shown to reporters after the forum but a technical glitz midway aborted the screening.
Escudero said the film included testimonies of Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, one of four generals mentioned in the tapes, and Col. Alexander Balutan.
In his Senate testimony in September 2005, Gudani said that then First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo had flown twice to Mindanao in a private helicopter a couple of days before the 2004 election to deliver boxes containing about P500 million.
Balutan testified that a certain Colonel Primo had issued an order to support the administration in the election.
Escudero has proposed a fact-finding inquiry to establish who truly won the 2004 balloting for the sake of history—a move that has elicited lukewarm response from Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr.
Grand conspiracy
Also on Thursday, former President Joseph Estrada urged the prosecution of all those involved in the alleged rigging of the 2004 balloting.
“After Arroyo was proclaimed president, FPJ told me, ‘I can’t believe the military could do this to me,’” Estrada said in a statement.
“Now it is slowly being confirmed that what happened in 2004 was a grand conspiracy, involving not only the mastermind but the Commission on Elections as well as the military and police,” he added.