Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Arangkada for July 7, 2005

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             BOMBA SA TIME

 

Kay wa man mopakitag interes si Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ug ang Malakanyang pag-ila kinsay nag-wiretap sa ilang panagsulti ni kanhi Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, bisan upat na ka semana human niulbo ang kontrobersiya, ug kay di man sab interesado ang Kongreso gawas ni Senador Rodolfo Biazon, ug kay otro man sang nilingiw ang media gawas sa Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) ug Newsbreak, dakong baligho nga ang Time, ang labing dakong magasin sa Estados Unidos, maoy nakauna pag-detalye sa ruta sa tulo ka oras nga audio recording sa wa pa mapabati ngadto sa publiko.

Ang artikulo sa Time sinuwat nilang Anthony Spaeth sa Washington ug Nelly Sindayen sa Manila maoy labing unang detalyadong asoy sa "Gloriagate" nga nabasahan sa Amerikanhong mga opisyal ug katawhan. Naglakip ni sa pagsuway sa Malakanyang pag-cover-up sa eskandalo pinaagi sa pagpresentar og pekeng bersiyon uban ni Edgar Ruado, ang chief of staff ni Kongresista Iggy Arroyo, bayaw sa presidente, nga niinsistir nga siya si "Gary" nga maoy ka-istorya sa presidente.

-o0o-

Niang di na kaayo bag-o dinhi sa Pilipinas pero eksplosibo pa gihapong kasayuran gikan sa Time, labi na atubangan sa determinadong paningkamot ni Presidente Arroyo pagkuha sa padayong suporta ni US President George Bush:

  • Si T/Sgt. Vidal Doble sa Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) maoy ni-wiretap sa cellular phone ni Garcillano sa mga buwan sa Mayo ug Hunyo sa niaging tuig isip kabahin sa iyang normal nga trabaho;
  • Gihatag ni Doble ang orihinal nga kopya sa recording ngadto sa drayber ug bodyguard ni Atty. Samuel Ong, kanhi deputy director sa National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Mayo karong tuiga;
  • Nakadawat og duha ka audiotapes gikan sa wa niya mailhing tinubdan pinaagi sa koreyo niadto gihapong Mayo si kanhi senador Francisco Tatad;
  • Niadtong Mayo 15, gisumiter ni Tatad ang audiotapes ngadto sa iyang abogadong si Allan Paguia kinsa iya sang gipangayoan og tambag unsaon pagamit ang recording; ug
  • Si Paguia mao nay naghimo og 32 minutos nga CD version nga wa na maglakip sa iyang gihulagway nga pribadong mga istorya sa pribadong mga indibiduwal.

-o0o-

Nipadayag og pagduda ang Time sa motibo ni Doble paghatag sa orihinal nga kopya sa recording ngadto ni Ong. Tinuod ba siyang gibayran sa oposisyon? Dunay mas klarong tubag ang artikulo sa Newsbreak: Gibisto sa kadagkoan sa ISAFP ang recording human laslasi ni AFP Chief Efren Abu ang dagkong gahom sa ahensiya.

Laing mga pangutana: Diin man gikan ang kopya ni Senador Panfilo Lacson nga iyang gipada para sa authentication sa eksperto sa Asutralia? Naatol ba lang nga si Doble sakop ni Lacson niadto sa Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF)? [30]   leo_lastimosa@abs-cbn.com

Tatad Is Tape's Source

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Tale of The Tape
He Said, She Said

At the center of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's woes is a widely circulated tape of purported telephone conversations between a woman and an election officer identified by ex-colleagues as Virgilio Garcillano. Here's why the recording is proving so troublesome for Arroyo:

What does the tape say?
It contains more than a dozen conversations between a man referred to as "Garci" and several callers, including a voice that sounds like Arroyo's. The most damaging excerpt is this:

Female voice: "So will I still lead by 1M [sic]?"
Garci: "More or less it's that advantage, ma'am."
Female voice: "It cannot be less than 1M?"
Garci: "I will force it."

What is the implication?
The "1M" may refer to 1 million votes—which is about the margin by which Arroyo won the May 2004 presidential election. In her apology to the nation last week, she admitted to a "lapse in judgment" for phoning an official of the Commission on Elections. She said she did so to ensure her lead would not be eroded by her opponents cheating. Arroyo's critics say that by contacting an election official during the counting, she abused her power. Arroyo neither mentioned the tape nor said the female voice was hers, and did not name the election official she talked to.

Why not?
That might have hoisted Arroyo on her own petard. On June 6, the presidential palace released two tapes: the Garci tape that is circulating, and another tape recording of the President speaking to someone called Gary, with similar dialogue. The palace said the Garci tape was doctored to make Arroyo look bad, and that the Gary tape is the genuine recording. A few days later, an Arroyo loyalist in the central Philippines, Edgar Ruado, chief of staff of Mrs. Arroyo's Congressman brother-in-law Ignacio Arroyo, came forward to say he was Gary. If Arroyo's voice was indeed the one on the Garci tape, and she had acknowledged so, she would have tacitly admitted that the Gary tape was a lie—implying a presidential palace cover-up.

How did the Garci tape become public?
Francisco Tatad, a former Senator in the opposition camp, says he received two audiotapes from an anonymous source in the mail in May. He gave them to a lawyer, Alan Paguia, asking for legal advice on the conversations. Paguia, who worked in 2003 as an attorney for Arroyo's predecessor Joseph Estrada, made a 32-minute condensed version. When the palace released its copy of the conversations (the Gary tape), Paguia started distributing the other version on CD. The lawyer says he wasn't working on behalf of Estrada, but had his own reasons for spreading the CDs: in November 2003 the Supreme Court had suspended Paguia's right to practice law for his repeated criticism of its approval of Arroyo's taking over the presidency from Estrada.

Who recorded the phone conversations in the first place?
Technical Sergeant Vidal Doble has admitted to taping the phone calls as part of his duties at the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Doble says he gave the original tapes to the driver and bodyguard of Samuel Ong, a former deputy chief of the National Bureau of Investigation. Why he did so—whether he was paid by the opposition, as has been alleged by Arroyo's aides—is unclear. Ong is in hiding; the original tapes, according to his attorney, are with a trusted friend. Election officer Garcillano has also disappeared and is rumored to have left the country.

The Wiretapped Voices

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Posted by Sheila Coronel 
PCIJ

AS I write this, the House of Representatives is playing the three-hour tape submitted by former Estrada lawyer Alan Paguia. Contrary to speculations, opposition senators have nothing to worry about. There is nothing in those tapes that implicates them. They are home free — for now. The same, however, cannot be said for some oppositionists running for local posts in Mindanao.

Today the Commission on Elections chairman, Benjamin Abalos, confirmed that during the elections, he got calls from three opposition senatorial candidates — Juan Ponce Enrile, Jamby Madrigal and Jinggoy Estrada. Enrile, who was reelected senator in 2004, admitted that he did speak to the Comelec chair, but only to make sure that his votes were properly counted. Madrigal and Estrada are so far silent.

So far, there have been no apologies for the impropriety of those calls, or of "lapses in judgment." Maybe the intent was to show, as Rep. Pichay has been repeating over and over the last few days,  that the President's phone calls to Garcillano were not unusual in our political culture.

But back to The Tape. The one that is playing in the House at the moment is also the same one released by former NBI Director Samuel Ong, and which you can download for free from this site (no need to go through a congressional hearing).

We have identified, with the help of four Comelec personnel and other sources, about two dozen voices on those tapes, and none of them belongs to an opposition senator.

Apart from the president, the First Gentleman and Garcillano himself, the voices we have identified include those of six candidates who ran in 2004, 11 Comelec officials, three political party lawyers and supporters, as well as Garcillano's wife Grace and secretary Ellen Peralta.

In addition, intelligence sources identified for us three of the five ISAFP agents who annotated the tape — that is, these agents, who were most likely the ones also tapping Garcilliano introduced each of the calls by identifying who was in them and the time and date it took place.

We will reveal the identities of all these people later this week, when the special edition of our i Report hits the streets. But for now, the opposition senatorial candidates can rest easy. None of them are included in whatever version of the "Hello Garci" tape. What should give them reason to worry is if Garcillano makes a comeback.

After all, in a June 7 interview with reporters, the Comelec commissioner looked very confident. At that point,  he didn't seem worried about any possible investigation of the wiretaps. He wasn't worried about the opposition, either. He said:  "I helped many of them, I have many friends among them."

That was a month ago,  when the only versions of the conversations that had been made public were those released by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye. Garcillano didn't yet know that the three-hour recording existed. A few days later, he dropped out of sight.

To help the congressmen make sense of the recording, here is a list of the candidates we identified as having called Garcillano from May 17 to June 18, 2004.

  • Robert Barbers
    Former senator; K4 senatorial candidate May 2004
    (Spoke to Garcillano on May 24 17:37; May 25 15:19; May 26 09:11; after May 26 19:50; May 29 15:16; June 3 13:35, 13:37, 13:39, 19:03; June 4 12:05; June 8 12:33; June 14 10:32; referred to in other Garci calls on May 24 16:00; May 25 11:45; June 1, 14:12, 15:07; June 2 10:23, 11:56; June 6 12:03; June 8 12:02, 14:33, 15:33; June 20, 12:08)
  • Suharto "Teng" Mangudadatu
    Rep., lone district, Sultan Kudarat, elected May 2004; believed to be closely associated with First Gentleman Mike Arroyo
    (Spoke to Garcillano on June 4 08:32; June 20 12:08 and was referred to in conversations on May 29 09:47; June 6 12:03; June 16 12:57)
  • Abdullah Dimaporo
    Rep., Lanao del Norte, re-elected May 2004
    (Spoke to Garcillano on June 8 17:28; June 9 06:39)
  • Gerardo Espina Sr.
    Former representative, lone district Biliran; municipal mayor, Naval, elected May 2004
    (Spoke to Garcillano on June 9 13:30)
  • Juhary Abinal Galo
    Mayoralty candidate, Lumba-Bayabao, Lanao del Sur
    (Spoke to Garcillano on June 2 21:45)
  • Abdusakur Tan
    Former governor, Sulu; KNP gubernatorial candidate, May 2004
    (Spoke to Garcillano on June 8 12:14, 15:56)

Garci: A Tarnished Man

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Poll official at heart of tape crisis has tarnished image 
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.

Garci Speaks Out

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Garcillano: Yes, I talked with Arroyo
By Michael Lim Ubac
Inquirer News Service

AFTER more than two weeks in hiding, Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano broke his silence on the wiretapping controversy last night and denied in an exclusive telephone interview with the Inquirer that he conspired with President Macapagal-Arroyo to rig last year's balloting.

Garcillano also said he talked to a number of candidates in the last election. They include vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda, then senatorial candidate Mar Roxas, Minority Leader Francis Escudero on behalf of his father Salvador, an opposition senatorial candidate who lost in the election.

Before the election, Garcillano said, he also talked to then senatorial candidate Jamby Madrigal.

No favors

Garcillano said they did not ask favors from him and simply voiced their concern about possible fraud.

"Tell the people that the conversations that have publicly come out of the tapes are untrue," said Garcillano, speaking from an undisclosed place in Mindanao. "Many of those conversations were doctored," he said.

Garcillano specifically referred to a portion in the conversations in tapes released by the opposition purportedly showing that he was assuring Ms Arroyo of a one-million vote margin.

"I did not say that, I categorically deny that," Garcillano said in his telephone call made as a House investigative panel was playing one version of the tape submitted by Alan Paguia, former counsel of deposed president Joseph Estrada.

He said he had been reluctant to come out, pointing out that with the flood of speculation sweeping the country he had lost credibility before the public.

"The people are biased. I never did anything to destroy the electoral process. I am not that stupid," he said.

He said at the proper time he was willing to come out and confront his accusers.