By Agence France-Presse
| VIRGILIO Garcillano, the man accused of stealing the 2004 election for Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, has faced allegations in the past of ballot-box skullduggery. The 68 year-old former Commission on Elections (Comelec) official is widely suspected of being one of the voices in a taped telephone conversation which allegedly shows Arroyo conniving with him to fix the May 2004 vote. The first part of the conversation, with a voice sounding like Arroyo's, saying "Hello, Garci?", has become an object of derision --widely used in rap tunes and mobile phone ringtones. But at the House of Representatives, which is investigating the alleged cheating, the three-hour tapes are serious stuff and are being used to bolster opposition calls for Arroyo to be unseated. "It's like undergoing a seminar for electoral fraud," said legislator Roilo Golez, the president's former national security adviser who broke away from his ex-boss last week over the controversy. Garcillano, who has withdrawn from the public eye since the scandal broke in June, was quoted in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper on Wednesday as saying that "many of those conversations ([on the tape] are doctored." Portrayed in the tapes as a polyglot who fielded calls in the main dialects of Cebuano, Tagalog and Ilocano, Garcillano categorically denied that he promised Arroyo a one-million-vote victory margin and said he would confront his accusers at the proper time. He has maintained there is nothing improper in a candidate speaking to a commissioner of the independent Comelec before the vote count is finished, adding that he spoke with other opposition and administration candidates before the votes were tallied. Other Comelec officials and candidates have since come forward, admitting that they had conversations about the elections before the count was finished. But all of them state that they did nothing improper. Garcillano however has a poor reputation as an election official that hurts his credibility, especially with the Congress. A lawyer and reserve military officer, Garcillano joined the election commission as a special attorney soon after passing the bar in 1960. He was stationed for much of his time in the southern island of Mindanao, a volatile place where political warlords use feudal loyalties, patronage, and private armies to win votes during elections. As he moved up the ranks of Comelec, Garcillano was hit by accusations of involvement of election cheating although few of the accusers went public. The most prominent case came in 1995 when then-senatorial candidate Aquilino Pimentel accused Garcillano of using his position as regional elections director in Mindanao to help switch votes from Pimentel to another candidate. Garcillano was never found guilty but Pimentel never forgot and is one of those leading the effort to unseat Arroyo. Despite Garcillano's checkered history, Arroyo in March 2004 appointed him one of the Comelec commissioners, a sensitive position that includes the independent supervision of voting and tallying during national polls. Congress, which must confirm the appointment of Comelec officials, bypassed Garcillano's appointment seven times -- effectively showing its disapproval. But Arroyo re-appointed him each time, bolstering speculation that the two enjoy a special relationship. |
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