Baguio treasurer says she is being set up in poll rap

BAGUIO CITY—The city government’s treasurer had asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to junk the complaint filed by the poll body’s former chair which implicated her in the alleged theft of ballots cast in Baguio in the 2013 elections.

Former Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr. had included city treasurer Alicia Onoza among suspected conspirators of former Tarlac Gov. Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco, who supposedly used the stolen ballots to manufacture evidence of automated election fraud and discredit the poll body.

Worthy Acosta, a former Cojuangco employee and Brillantes’ witness, said he stole ballots from a ballot box inside the city government warehouse.

Cojuangco had denied Acosta’s account.

Brillantes’ main evidence against Onoza was a Feb. 2 inventory report claiming that five ballot boxes under her custody were weighed following an unscheduled inspection, and two boxes were confirmed lighter, which suggested that their contents were missing.

One of the boxes, identified as Ballot Box No. 5, matched the numerical codes of ballots shown in a PowerPoint presentation about a 2013 election fraud which Cojuangco’s group revealed at a Baguio university forum in August.

“It is a remarkable coincidence that the ballot box [from which] the group of Acosta supposedly took the official ballots was the same box picked by Baguio election officer John Paul Martin during their inventory count [in February] … Acosta and Martin might have [had] the same eye for that unique ballot box,” Onoza said in her April 17 counter affidavit.

Onoza, like all local government treasurers, are deputized by Comelec to take charge of used ballots and other materials following an election.

“I have been in charge of the ballot boxes since this office was [led by my predecessor Thelma] Manaois. We have never been visited by Comelec officials to conduct inventories in preparation for the next elections,” Onoza said on Monday.

“And granting that the inventory was necessary, why didn’t they count all the boxes? If their purpose was to weigh the boxes, which was an unusual process, why didn’t they weigh all the boxes [under city government custody]?” she asked.

Martin, who has been on study leave since April, said in a telephone interview on Monday, that Brillantes ordered him to conduct the inventory and to seek out Ballot Box No. 5.

“My report does not take Onoza into account for any wrongdoing. It is an objective, comparative analysis of [Ballot Box No. 5 and some boxes were selected due to physical defects],” he said.

A panel of Comelec lawyers has been looking into Brillantes’ complaint since April.

Onoza said Acosta’s statement about the theft had been proven wrong.

“Acosta claimed he was with an employee of [former Baguio Rep. Bernardo] Vergara, when he stole these ballots, but [the former employee, Ferdinand Balanag] was out of the country [that time],” she said.

Balanag, in his counter-affidavit, said he had accompanied his father to the United States from June 17 to July 7, 2013, and was not in the Philippines on the dates of the alleged theft.

Acosta had also claimed Vergara, who lost in the city’s congressional race, provided him information as to how the city government warehouse could be accessed. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon