Re: 2 first gentleman operators spill the beans on mindanao cheating

Tripe of the first order. Try facts instead of anecdotes for a change.
Everyone likes a good story but they don't make fact. Maybe you should just
leave your politics in the movie theatre.


"gwen garci" <sylviapatis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1129950897.359853.320100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lanao del Sur "Fernando Poe, Fernando Poe." With clenched fists and
his right hand raised, octogenarian Hadji Mohammad Monte repeated the
name of the late action star like a mantra when asked whom he voted for
in the last presidential elections. He insisted that Poe was number one
among the residents of this town where the late king of Philippine
movies was and still is very popular.

In fact, town residents cheered Monte on as they shouted, "FPJ! FPJ!"
When asked, six of every 10 residents here claimed they had voted for
Fernando Poe Jr. Only a few women admitted going for President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, but even they conceded that there was no way the
movie icon could lose in a clean election here.

In the certificate of canvass that reached Congress, President Arroyo
got 4,700 votes in Poona Bayabao, a fifth-class municipality in Lanao
del Sur that is a 45-minute drive from Marawi City. All her rivals,
including Poe, each scored a big, fat zero.

"What we saw in the election returns was that each candidate had
votes," said Nasser Dibansa, principal of the Bansayan Elementary
School and head of the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections
(Namfrel) 2004 Operation Quick Count here. "Not only Fernando Poe, but
also (Eddie) Villanueva every candidate had votes. Since I was born,
I have not experienced (anything) like that, that a candidate would get
zero."

Because of the improbability of the poll results, Poona Bayabao has
been cited as an incontrovertible proof of massive cheating in
Mindanao, particularly Lanao del Sur.

These charges were bolstered by the controversial testimony at the
Senate of Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, who was stationed in Lanao del
Sur during the 2004 elections. Last month, Gudani told the Senate that
he had witnessed and observed "all kinds of cheating from start to
finish" in the province.

When "Probe" visited Lanao del Sur recently, it found further proof:
Two political operators, Lomala Macadaub and Abdul Wahab Batugan of the
Lanao del Sur Unity Movement for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who
said that their group was behind alleged dagdag-bawas (vote-padding and
-shaving) operations in the province, as well as in Sultan Kudarat,
Sulu and Tawi Tawi. They also said the funds for their operations came
from First Gentleman Jose Miguel 'Mike' Arroyo.

These operators say that their tasks included talking to, and paying
off, elections officers to reverse the ratio of the votes in the
president's favor. Sometimes, they admitted, they altered the
certificates of canvass (COCs) themselves, thus explaining the
disparity in the results in the election returns and the COCs.

Lawyer Jesus Santos, spokesperson of the First Gentleman, denied his
client masterminded and financed any rigging of the presidential polls.
While he was not aware of the day-to-day activities of his client,
Santos said, he was sure the First Gentleman was not very active in the
President's 2004 campaign. But he conceded, "He helped in a way. His
wife was president and candidate. If he could help other people, the
more he would help someone who happens to be his wife."

While the charges of election fraud in Lanao were raised even last
year, these were resurrected with Gudani's testimony. What bolsters the
general's allegations, however, is not so much a smoking gun but a
"smoking" tape. The general, who retired earlier this month, had been
the subject of one of the wiretapped conversations between President
Arroyo and then Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who had
complained about Gudani's supposed intransigence in Lanao.

Two days after the elections, Gudani was suddenly relieved of his Lanao
post. By May 29, the commissioner was telling the president on the
phone that while Poe was still leading, "mag-compensate po sa Lanao
'yan (we will compensate in Lanao)."

Based on the certificates of canvass submitted to the Commission on
Elections (Comelec), President Arroyo trounced her closest rival, Poe,
in Lanao del Sur with 158,748 votes as against 50,107 votes. But the
ratio was different in the Namfrel reports, which are based on election
returns (ERs). The terminal report of Namfrel's national headquarters,
which tallied less than 50 percent of ERs, had Poe leading the
president, 42,374 to 32,389. Namfrel's Lanao chapter, on the other
hand, was able to complete 77 percent of the count in 38 of the
province's 39 towns. Poe was leading Arroyo, 67,989 to 52,633.

Hadji Abdullah Dalidig, Namfrel provincial chairman, said that the 2004
presidential polls was the "worst and dirtiest" of the five elections
he has monitored in Lanao del Sur. "What was done to the votes at the
presidential level, even grade one children would know the votes of the
other candidates were sabotaged," he said.



In April 2004, First Gentleman Mike Arroyo and former defense secretary
Orlando Mercado were guests at the launch of the Lanao del Sur Unity
Movement for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The head of the movement, Sha'ria
court judge, Nagamura Moner, sits behind Mercado.

Dalidig's suspicions were confirmed by Macadaub and Batugan, both
members of the Lanao del Sur Unity Movement, then headed by Nagamura
Moner, the Shari'a court judge of Wao-Bumbaran. It was Moner who
founded the movement and launched it in April 2004, they said.

But while Macadaub said the president's husband provided the funds for
their operations, he denied Gudani's allegation that the First
Gentleman went around Iligan in a helicopter two weeks before the polls
with a stash of P500 million. "It's not true that the First Gentleman
was going around in a plane, chopper actually," he said. "The truth is
that it was our boss who was in the chopper Judge Moner."

Moner supposedly went around Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Sultan Kudarat and
Tawi Tawi from May 14 to 17 to distribute what was allegedly money from
Mike Arroyo to his men, who were in turn tasked to deliver the funds to
election officers "para baligtarin ang COCs (to reverse the
certificates of canvass)," said Macadaub.

According to Michaelangelo Zuce, Garcillano's nephew who testified in
the Senate last August, the Lanao del Sur votes were crucial to the
administration, as they were needed to offset Poe's yawning lead in
Misamis Oriental, where the action star was ahead of Mrs. Arroyo by as
much as 70,000 votes.

In the meantime, Santos, Mike Arroyo's lawyer, asserted that his client
spent most of his time in Manila before, during and after the
elections. Santos said it was presidential liaison officer for
political affairs Jose Ma. "Joey" Rufino who was in charge of the
Mindanao leg of the president's election bid.

But newspaper accounts of the presidential campaign showed that Mike
Arroyo was at least in Cagayan de Oro City, where he was the guest of
honor at the launch of the Lanao del Sur Unity Movement for President
Arroyo in April 2004. It was there where Macadaub and Batugan
supposedly met the First Gentleman, who promised them a "better life."

The launch was attended by a number of Lanao mayoralty candidates from
the opposition who shifted to the administration camp reportedly upon
Moner's prodding. Even then, there were speculations that money flowed
during the event, but this was denied by the First Gentleman and Moner.


Reached for comment in Iligan City, Moner neither confirmed nor denied
the recent allegations of his men. He said the two were his former
partners at the Moner and Associates Consultancy and Shari'a Law Office
of Iligan City and are active officers of the Lanao Unity Movement.

"Not only are they former partners but some, or many, of them are my
relatives...they seek my advice and I have always told them that number
one, we should be patient and number two, we should stand for the
truth," Moner said.

A defeated gubernatorial candidate in 1998, Moner admitted converting
his own political machinery into a movement to support President
Arroyo. He said he planned to run for governor last year but was
convinced by the First Gentleman to just help the president.

"I was persuaded by the First Gentleman through Alfonso Cusi, then
Philippine Ports Authority general manager, whose assistant is my
brother-in-law," said the Maranao judge. "He even invited me to his
birthday party in Malacaang."

Moner said that upon his reappointment to the Shari'a court by
President Arroyo in February 2004, he gave up the leadership of the
movement to trusted lieutenants like Macadaub and Batugan.

Macadaub told "Probe" that he was sent to Sulu during the canvassing of
votes to meet an official who coordinated his meetings with election
officers. He delivered P500,000 for the poll officials and went back to
Iligan after five days with a photocopy of the COC. "Gloria, she won by
about more than 18,000," he said.

Certificates of canvass showed Arroyo beating Poe in Sulu with 78,429
votes against 60,807 votes. The final tally of Namfrel had Poe leading
the count with 45,740 votes while Arroyo having 23,896 votes.

For his part, Batugan, a former election officer himself, was tasked
with talking to Lanao del Sur election officials. Two other members of
the movement accompanied him. "We talked to them to reverse the COC,"
he said. "That's where we did it, the COC. We just gave them money."

The Lanao del Sur dirty-tricks operations had a P1-million budget, said
Batugan. In a phone interview, Gudani said he has never met Moner but
has heard of him and his group's activities.

According to Batugan, the COCs in the towns of Wao and Bumbaran were
doctored in front of him. In the town of Saguiran, he himself filled up
the COC.

The Wao election returns secured from the Comelec and Namfrel indicated
that Poe obtained 7,647 votes against Arroyo's 3,816 votes. In the
municipal COC, the tables were turned: Arroyo had 7,614 votes while Poe
had 4,967 votes. The poll results in Bumbaran and Saguiran followed the
same pattern.

Batugan and Macadaub said election officials intentionally delayed the
canvassing of votes in Mindanao to make way for their "follow-up"
operations. Elections officials had supposedly received a substantial
amount before the polls and the money they distributed was for extra
work that had to be done.

Zuce, who was then on Rufino's staff, confirmed this in a separate
interview. He also said that while administration operators worked
independently of each other, it was clear to all that the First
Gentleman had his own unit working in Mindanao. Zuce himself operated
in Mindanao together with the group of Garcillano and Rufino. His tasks
were similar to that of Macadaub and Batugan emissaries assigned to
monitor, coordinate and deliver money to election officials.

In the follow-up operations, the budget for the elections officers was
between P30,000 and P50,000, depending on the size of the town's voting
population, said Macadaub. Every vote to cover the losses of President
Arroyo was allegedly paid P10, while votes added in excess of the FPJ
lead were equivalent to P20 each. A P5,000 to P10,000 "deposit" was
made before the municipal canvass. Full payment was made upon the
submission of a photocopied COC to administration emissaries.

The movement members said they worked independently, but were
supposedly endorsed to the election officers by phone by Commissioner
Garcillano. Macadaub explained, "We did not know the people we were
supposed to meet or talk to. So Garci called them to advise that we
were arriving with the money."

Batugan and Macadaub admitted they are spilling the beans because they
were disappointed with the First Gentleman. He did not fulfill his
promise, they said. They had wanted government jobs. Said Macadaub: "We
didn't even ask for money. To tell you honestly, I went to Jolo for
P5,000 only as my expenses. When I visited at the time, most were for
FPJ." He said Arroyo would have lost had they not gone there.

The disgruntled Lanao Unity Movement members wrote the First Gentleman
and his son, Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel "Mikey" Arroyo, to remind them
of their promise. Two letters, one dated September 2004, the other
March 2005, were signed by three movement members. It put on record
"clandestine" operations in the 2004 presidential polls to secure an
Arroyo victory. One even provided specific details of the irregular
activities that included "approaching, convincing Board of Election
Officers and Local Election Officers to facilitate and ensure that all
votes be for PGMA in consideration of a certain amount of money" for
each election official.

Surprisingly, the Office of the President answered one of the letters.
The reply, written on a Malacaang letterhead and signed by Assistant
Secretary Juris Soliman, said that while the First Gentleman
acknowledges the "invaluable support" extended to his wife, he "does
not and cannot meddle with governance of the administration."

In fact, the alleged activities of Moner's group are an open secret in
Lanao. Macadaub and Batugan even said they had planned to come out with
their story as early as June, when the Garci tapes scandal first broke.
They thought of joining a protest rally that was supposed to greet
President Arroyo in Cagayan de Oro, but Malacaang somehow got wind of
their plan. The president reportedly called for Judge Moner who was
supposedly asked to pacify his men.

Moner promised the men Malacaang would attend to their needs in two
weeks. "We agreed," said Macadaub. "That day we even held a
presscon...instead of protesting, we again promoted her, supported
her." The group also condemned the opposition for supposedly recruiting
them for a plot against the president. But even then, they didn't get
what they were promised.

Meanwhile, the townsfolk of Poona Bayabao have only recently learned
that they had likely been robbed of their votes, and only because of a
fluke. A town of just a little more than 17,000, a third of whom were
registered voters in 2004, Poona Bayabao can provide only the bare
minimum to its residents. Even the very basic services are lacking
here.

"We have electricity only 20 minutes every day," said police chief SPO1
Alimundas Lucman. "Sometimes we have none for the whole day. Here at
the police station, we don't even have vehicles so when trouble breaks
out, we can't respond right away."

But by some stroke of luck, there was electricity when the story about
the presidential election results in Poona Bayabao made TV news
recently. Recalled Namfrel's Dibansa, who refused to discuss what he
said was a threat to his life: "It was only from TV that most of us
here learned about how President Arroyo's opponents got no votes,
including FPJ."

Lucman, meanwhile, looked like he still couldn't believe what he had
heard. He said Poona Bayabans grew up worshipping Poe as the fearless
Muslim policeman in the movie "Magnum .357." "How could we forget him?"
he said. "And with us Muslims, we want our leaders to be men."


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