Senate to probe allegations of massive poll fraud

MANILA, Philippines—The Senate is opening an inquiry into charges of massive electoral fraud in 2004 and 2007 in the hopes of putting a closure to the scandal that has hounded former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Senator Teofisto Guingona III on Monday confirmed that the Blue Ribbon Committee would begin its inquiry into the “Hello Garci’’ scandal and subsequent charges of fraud in 2007 once a resolution seeking the inquiry is referred to it.

He voiced hopes that former Maguindanao elections supervisor Lintang Bedol and Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, possible key witnesses in the fraud, would help the Senate put a closure to the controversy.

“It should lead to, number one, electoral reforms, but most definitely, it will put a finish to this continuing saga that we all know that FPJ was and is the real president,’’ Guingona said in an interview.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson has filed a resolution directing the blue ribbon committee to inquire into the charges of “widespread, systematic, organized and massive poll fraud and election sabotage’’ in 2004 and 2007.

The senator, himself an alleged victim of the vote-shaving and -padding in Maguindanao in 2007, said the charges pointed to Arroyo and former elections chair Benjamin Abalos as the brains of the fraud.

“Election fraud and electoral sabotage of this magnitude and scale cannot be committed without public officers committing malfeasance, misfeasance and non-feasance in their offices,’’ he said in the resolution.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and other senators had expressed reservations to a fresh congressional inquiry into the scandal, asserting that the Department of Justice should handle this.

Bedol and Ampatuan made renewed allegations that Arroyo had ordered the rigging of the outcome of the 2004 presidential elections to favor herself, and the 2007 senatorial elections to favor her candidates in Maguindanao province.