Grace Poe: Whatever happened to ‘Hello Garci’?

Senator Grace Poe during her privilege speech at the Senate. JOSEPH VIDAL/ PRIB

MANILA, Philippines—“Hello Garci?”

Suddenly, that familiar audio of the purported phone conversation between then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and then Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano allegedly to rig the results of the May 2004 presidential election was heard again.

Sen. Grace Poe on Wednesday delivered a privilege speech that refreshed the country’s memory of the scandal that she said robbed her late father, action king Fernando Poe Jr., of the presidency.

Poe said Arroyo, now a lawmaker detained on plunder charges, ran the country from 2004 to 2010 on a “manufactured mandate,” no thanks to her “election operators.”

And while Arroyo is facing charges for a separate electoral offense, most of her cohorts—Garcillano, Benjamin Abalos Sr., Lintang Bedol, Rey Sumalipao and Ignacio Bunye—have escaped prosecution, she said.

“In our country many wrongdoers do not get punished while good people are made to suffer when they come out and speak the truth,” she said.

In contrast, the senator wondered what happened to whistle-blowers such as retired Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani; Sgt. Vidal Doble, the intelligence agent who leaked the Garci tapes; Michaelangelo Zuce, Garcillano’s nephew who testified about the payoffs he made; Abdullah Daligdig, an official of the National Movement for Free Electons who exposed the discrepancies in the COCs (certificates of canvass) in the ARMM; and Samuel Ong, deputy director of the National Bureau of Investigation who exposed the Garci tapes to the media. Ong has died.

“It’s often said that Filipinos are too forgiving—that we have short-term memories. How many of us still remember ‘Hello Garci?’ But I believe that there are still many Filipinos who remember as I do,” Poe said.

“And I know that I won in the 2013 elections precisely because people remember FPJ and the great injustice Mrs. Arroyo committed against the voters. ‘Hello Garci,’ for better or worse, changed the course of history in the Philippines,” she added.

Cohort promoted

That scandal in May 2004 “exposed the labyrinth of deceit, malfeasance and fraud that plagued” the Arroyo administration, Poe said before clicking on a film presentation.

The presentation began with the audio of the phone conversation between Arroyo and Garcillano, and provided flashbacks of the scandal beginning with footage of Election Day up to Arroyo’s unforgettable “I am sorry” address that Poe herself narrated.

Some of Poe’s colleagues, including the elder Poe’s running mate Sen. Loren Legarda, were so touched by the presentation that they rose to congratulate her.

Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano used the occasion to twit Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Sixto Brillantes, who, he said, not only failed to prosecute Arroyo’s cohorts, but promoted some of them.

The presentation showed wiretaps of Arroyo purportedly asking Garcillano to pad votes in Maguindanao in her favor over closest rival, Poe.

Arroyo won by more than 1 million votes over the action movie icon, and survived several impeachment complaints arising from the scandal, among others, to complete her term in June 2010.

‘Grossly underestimated’

Poe died from a massive stroke in December 2004. His widow, Susan Roces, accused Arroyo of stealing the vote from him.

Senator Poe said the 2004 presidential vote was easily “one of the dirtiest” in history, with votes in many areas “chamber-loaded” for Arroyo to ensure her victory.

But Arroyo’s camp “grossly underestimated” the elder Poe’s popularity and a week after the vote, Arroyo realized her “buffer votes” were insufficient to cover the “avalanche of votes” for Poe from Metro Manila and the “Lingayen-Lucena” corridor, she said.

“This is the reason why Mrs. Arroyo had to call Garci. Seeing that she was losing heavily in Luzon, Mrs. Arroyo realized that she needed Mindanao to win,” the senator said.

Arroyo called Garcillano 15 times between May 26 and June 10. But realizing that Mindanao was Poe’s bailiwick, her camp resorted to rigging the results at the provincial level, so that canvassed results favoring Poe at the municipal level were reversed at the provincial level, she said.

“This was how brazen they were in committing fraud, that’s why their scheme was uncovered,” she said.

Poe said Arroyo became President through fraud.

“What she had was merely a mandate ‘manufactured’ for her by her election operators. This ultimately proved to be her weakness, her Achilles heel,” she said.

And since she had no mandate, Arroyo depended on “unscrupulous individuals,” ties that led to a string of scandals, such as the NBN-ZTE deal, the fertilizer fund scam mess, the NorthRail project, among others, Poe said.

“We should prevent these from happening again. We should ensure that our right to vote and to choose our leaders are protected,” she said.

No one jailed

Poe lamented that most of Arroyo’s cohorts had not been charged, much less spent a night in jail.

She ticked off the names of Garcillano, former Comelec Chair Abalos Sr., Bedol, Sumalipao, now elections director in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and Bunye, who had quit the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Poe said she would propose that the prescriptive period for election offenses be raised from current five years to 10 years.

She also declared support for the immediate enactment of the Whistleblowers Protection Act. Yesterday morning, she filed Resolution No. 679 calling for the omnibus review of the Electoral Code of the Philippines in light of information technology.

“By institutionalizing reforms, we protect not only the present generation but especially future generations,” she said.

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