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Continued from Part 1 .Is this how they did it?
To facilitate vote padding, the first thing allegedly done was to identify provinces where Mrs. Arroyo rated well in surveys in order to make substantial vote padding in these areas appear credible.
Before FPJ entered the presidential race, GMA registered the highest support from the poorest E class with 29 percent. From ABC class, she got the lowest, 20 percent.
An SWS Survey from September 2003 to March 2004 showed that GMA received +44 percent satisfactory rating in the Visayas, and 11 percent, her lowest, in Metro Manila. The provinces where Arroyo showed a strong following were Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo and Bohol.
The January 2004 SWS survey for presidentiables had FPJ in the lead with 36%, GMA was only at second place with 27 percent.
As CENPEG stated, "during election, fraud already takes place at the first leg of this political exercise - the registration."
Voter addition facilitates vote padding, enabling the second step. The number of expected registered voters was allegedly increased from 38.8M to 43.5M to conceal vote padding, according to the FPJM document.
In Pampanga, the expected number of registered voters for 2004 was 944,092. But in the PCoC, the number of registered voters was allegedly padded to total 1,080,751 or an addition of 136,659.
In the Province of Cebu, the expected number of registered voters for 2004 was 1,299,612. But in the PCoC, the number of registered voters was padded to total 1,780,708. 481,096 voters was added. In Iloilo City, the expected number of registered voters was padded from 191,620 to 240,153. The Bohol voter registration ballooned from 556,579 to 619,139.
Thus, in Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo and Bohol, there was an increase of 951,695 registered voters, roughly the same number as the votes added to GMA.
The group claimed that the third leg of the fraud was over-printing of election documents: Election Returns (ER) for the precinct tallies; Statements of Votes (SoV) for the precinct and municipal breakdowns; and Certificates of Canvass (CoC) for the municipal, city and provincial totals. The extra documents were allegedly intended to contain altered results and to substitute for documents with the genuine results.
A former COMELEC Commissioner admitted several months before the 2004 elections that COMELEC had indeed over-printed election forms - 3 million ballots and 33,000 election returns.
Fourth, a separate operation involved "pre-computing" the desired vote totals per precinct and recording them in a master list, which is then used as a guide to tally the altered votes on the over-printed ERs.
Fifth is the "certification" of the false ERs after the votes are tallied, using the master list of Board of Election Inspectors.
Sixth was the sending of fabricated ERs that reflect landslide votes for GMA, to election officers and local operatives. They were then instructed to switch the real precinct results with the false returns.
Hello Garci
Possibly, despite the massive effort, the President had to call "Garci" because the unexpected happened - the fabricated votes in GMA's bailiwicks were not enough to cover the avalanche of votes for FPJ that came in from Luzon, including Metro Manila.
Historically, the vote-rich Lingayen-to-Lucena corridor elects a president. This covers Pangasinan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Bulacan, Metro Manila, Rizal, Laguna, Cavite, Batangas and Quezon.
In other words, without the 951,695 votes added to GMA in the PCIB area, GMA would be losing by 383,939.
GMA allegedly made at least 15 calls to Virgilio Garcillano, a long-time COMELEC Commissioner in Mindanao, from May 26 to June 10, 2004. The calls hinted at the arrangement of election results in Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Tawi-tawi and Basilan.
GMA allegedly wanted a lead of at least one (1) million votes. At that point, GMA had an artificial lead of 567,656 from Luzon and Visayas. Garcillano allegedly tampered with the results and as a result, GMA got what she wanted: a lead of 1,063,772 votes even though NAMFREL's count showed that FPJ was leading in major regions.
The results of the 2004 election were legitimized after Congress refused to open the Election Returns. And in the dead of the night on June 24, 2004, Mrs. Arroyo walked into Congress to be proclaimed.
Lingering fraud
Unless a systemic change occurs, fraud will remain embedded in the country's infrastructure of governance. The machinery used to shield Arroyo from two impeachment complaints include her allies in the Congress, local government, military and even members of COMELEC, according to Bulatlat.com.
"Fraud is committed in the guise of a democratic exercise. Fraud recycles the political dynasties and keeps them in power. Fraud may be used to prolong patronage politics and keep family dynasties and crooked politicians in power. Fraud may be used to prolong patronage politics and keep family dynasties and crooked politicians in power," an analysis by CENPEG noted.
As expected, electoral fraud took place again in 2007 with "a pattern of massive, deeply-rooted, systematic fraud and violence rivaling those in previous elections." election watchdog Kontra-Daya stated. It added that without the efforts of vigilant citizens, the mass media, and various poll watchdogs, the cheating, intimidation brutality and bloodshed would have been worse.
No justice, no closure
The criminal prosecution of perpetrators of the large-scale systematic fraud in the May 10, 2004 presidential election never happened. Several of the so-called ‘Garci Generals' even got promoted.
Political analyst Benjie Oliveros posed a challenge worth pondering, "Would the Filipino people allow the Arroyo government to get away with murdering activists, stealing the people's vote, and plundering the nation's coffers? If we do, what then would prevent the Arroyo government from moving heaven and earth to perpetuate itself in power? President Arroyo already lied once when she declared in 2002 that she would not be running for president in 2004 only to take it back later."
He added, "How can we be sure she would make good her declaration that she would step down peacefully in 2010? If ever the presidential elections would push through and the Arroyo government is able to influence the results, we could expect her anointed successor to be as audacious as her and for the culture of impunity in the commission of human rights violations and corruption to continue or even worsen."
This article is the second of two installments. Read the rest of the piece on the Philippine Online Chronicles.
Anatomy of a fraud? (Part 1 of 2)
Photo: “Tallies” by Eric James Sarmiento, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved
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