Comelec chief’s quarrel with wife sidebar to bigger story

The quarrel between Commission on Elections Chair Andy Bautista and his wife, Patricia, is just a sidebar to a much bigger story: the May 2016 national elections.

President Digong, the story goes, was cheated of several million votes while Bongbong Marcos lost the vice presidential race to Leni Robredo because of alleged massive cheating perpetrated by the Liberal Party.

It was a tale of dagdag-bawas (literally, plus-minus) in which the vote for one candidate was supposedly counted in favor of a rival bet to make the latter win.

It was not a new phenomenon as it also reportedly happened in previous elections.

The buzz is that candidate Rodrigo Duterte should have garnered 21 million votes instead of the official 16 million votes which made him win.

According to rumors, the 5 million votes were counted in favor of Mar Roxas who was lagging behind in the surveys, just a notch ahead of the late Sen. Miriam Defensor.

That’s the reason, so the story goes, Roxas overtook Sen. Grace Poe, who was a frontrunner in the early surveys, and Vice President Jojo Binay.

And while people slept, Marcos, who was leading in the early count by 1 million votes over close rival Robredo, was overtaken by the latter for the vice presidential race, according to the buzz.

“Marcos really won in that election, Mon,” said my source at the Comelec.

Since the Liberal Party, reportedly in cahoots with some Comelec officials, could not make Roxas win despite the massive dagdag-bawas, it settled for Robredo winning the vice presidency.

In fairness to Robredo, my Comelec source said, she was clueless about the cheating.

For the benefit of my dear readers, I had endorsed Robredo for the vice presidency and Digong for the presidency in this column.

The Liberal Party spent hundreds of millions of pesos to make its candidates win, so the rumors go.

That’s probably the reason for the P329,220,962 in deposits which Patricia Bautista claims her estranged husband has with Luzon Development Bank.

Patricia or Trish claims Bautista has $12,778 with Rizal Commercial Bank, HK$948,358.97 with Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp. and other assets which were not declared in his SALN.

Bautista was the government official this column was referring to months ago, citing his wife as the source.

In fact, I met with sources close to Trish at a restaurant in Bonifacio Global City with Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre and representatives of Presidential Executive Assistant Christopher “Bong” Go to listen to a tale of alleged massive cheating in the last elections.

Also present were a Comelec commissioner I won’t identify for now and Bautista’s former executive secretary at the Presidential Commission on Good Government and the Comelec.

That meeting apparently became a prelude to a recent audience Trish had with President Digong in Malacañang.

But before this story ends, I’d like to mention that there’s a third party involved: former commercial model Alvin Lim.

Trish has been seeing Lim who is also Andy’s friend, a source close to the couple said.