Garcillano says he is not afraid of being arrested

BAUNGON, Bukidnon—Former elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano said he does not fear being arrested in connection with the electoral sabotage case filed against former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Garcillano said his “conscience is clear” because he had nothing to do with the 2007 elections.

“Bahala sila, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said in an interview at his farmhouse here Sunday afternoon.

However, Garcillano also challenged the government, if it is serious, to also question former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Benjamin Abalos.

“If you can remember, Abalos talked with resigned senator Juan Miguel Zubiri and (former Maguindanao Governor) Zaldy Ampatuan. They talked together sometime in 2007 in Sulu Hotel,” Garcillano added.

He said that the Electoral Sabotage law came after he left Comelec.

Garcillano added that former election supervisor for Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat Lintang Bedol should not have been charged together with Arroyo and Ampatuan.

“Bedol came out because of the enticement of the government that his sentence for election violations will be commuted,” Garcillano said.

But he also insisted on his innocence in the “Hello Garci” scandal, wherein then President Arroyo purportedly called him on the call asking favorable results in the 2004 national elections.

“They keep on saying there is a “mother of all tapes” and where [is it] now? They cannot produce it because there is none,” he said.

Garcillano said he has shared everything he knows and there was nothing more to say.

He said the last time he and Arroyo met was in 2004.

Garcillano, however, said the Aquino administration should have allowed Arroyo to seek medical treatment abroad, “the same way Aquino’s father, former senator Benigno Aquino, who was convicted and was in prison, was allowed by former President Ferdinand Marcos to seek treatment abroad.”

“If we follow the logical approach, if they (Aquinos) were given the chance before, they should also do it now,” he added.