Senate to resume probe into election rigging

Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III. INQUIRER file photo

MANILA, Philippines – The Senate committee on electoral reforms is set to resume its investigation and gather more evidence to firm up the electoral sabotage case against former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said Saturday the inquiry was independent of the one completed by the joint panel of the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections. He said the focus would be “electoral reforms so that the shenanigans of the past would not be repeated.”

“If, in the process, new evidence on election fraud comes out, it can be used in her trial,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, referring to Arroyo, now a Pampanga representative, who was served an arrest warrant Friday night at her hospital bed. She was indicted on a charge of electoral sabotage hours earlier.

The previous committee hearing focused on the testimony of Nagamura Moner, a former Shariah district court judge who admitted bribing election officers in six areas in Mindanao to favor Arroyo in the 2004 presidential election. Pimentel said he has yet to decide on the date of the next hearing, which he would conduct jointly with the Blue Ribbon Committee.

Moner, who had given conflicting testimonies in the past six years, claimed his handler was Alfonso Cusi, then general manager of the Philippine Ports Authority and who was supposedly getting instructions from  Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, the former President’s husband. Both Cusi and Mike Arroyo vehemently denied the allegation.

Pimentel, an apparent victim of fraud in the 2007 senatorial elections, noted that the information filed against Arroyo at the Pasay Regional Trial Court could still be amended before her arraignment.

Malacañang shrugged off complaints on Saturday that the administration railroaded the filing of an electoral sabotage case against Arroyo to counter the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order, which allowed her to seek medical treatment abroad under certain conditions.

“A lot of our countrymen are complaining that the justice system in this country is moving a little too slow – very, very slowly in fact,” Abigail Valte, deputy presidential spokesperson, said in her weekly media forum aired over Radyo ng Bayan.

“But in case that [a case] comes out in the proper procedure and the proper time, we are accused of railroading [the process]. So, how does one [establish] middle ground in that conversation?” Valte said Arroyo was “being accorded courtesy because of her medical condition.”

Pimentel also defended the Aquino administration against allegations of railroading the case, saying it had “passed through experienced prosecutors for a few months.”

“No, it’s not hasty. It’s hasty only to those who failed to leave the country,” he said sarcastically. “I think the government has an airtight case against the former President.”

Pimentel was convinced that the DoJ and Comelec panel was correct in filing the case at the Pasay RTC and not in the Sandiganbayan. He said public officials were charged in the anti-graft court only if they “commit a crime in the performance of their job or in relation to their duty.”

“Electoral sabotage, obviously, is not part of the duties of a public official,” he said.

Political Affairs Undersecretary Ibarra Gutierrez cited Section 268 of the Omnibus Election Code, saying it “specifically vests RTCs with jurisdiction over election offenses, including electoral sabotage.”

“If [Arroyo’s] camp insists on a trial by the Sandiganbayan that will come in due time, once the Office of the Ombudsman completes its investigation of at least six plunder complaints against her and finds probable cause to charge her before the anti-graft court,” he said in a press release.