Sulu, Basilan
In Sulu, a public school teacher testified before the Comelec that she saw her fellow school teachers and a barangay chair fill out ballots in their town in the early hours of election day.
In a press conference, GO lawyer Diego Palomares Jr. said that no elections ever took place in the second district of Sulu. The latter has 10 municipalities with around 100,000 votes.
Lente lawyer Raissa Jajurie, in an account published in an online publication, said she saw the BEIs writing on the ballots which had already been thumbmarked.
At the national canvassing, TU allegedly won in Sulu with 10-2 outcome against the Genuine Opposition (GO).
Meanwhile, in Basilan, congressional candidate Jim Hataman-Saliman had sought the declaration of failure of elections in “certain barangays” in at least six towns of Basilan province.
The canvassing of votes in the remaining town of Basilan was suspended after Saliman filed the petition. The Comelec has yet to hear Saliman’s petition.
Garci boys
In areas where these election irregularities have been recorded, Comelec men closely identified with the notorious former Comelec Commissioner Garcillano, have retained their positions, or worse, have been promoted..
Among them are Jubiel Surmieda and Renault Macarambon, members of the Comelec’s Special Action Group (SAG) tasked to oversee the conduct of special polls in ARMM. Another is Jose Tolentino Jr., head of the SAG, who was implicated in the MegaPacific scam but was not charged. (The scam involves a multi-billion contract to automate the 2004 elections.)
More to the point, election officials repeatedly mentioned in the “Hello Garci” tapes such as Lintang Bedol and Rey Sumalipao, are still very much around, supervising the conduct of the polls in ARMM.
Sumalipao is the former Lanao del Sur provincial election officer who confirmed in 2004 that the wiretapped conversation between him and Garcillano was true. He has been promoted as the regional director for ARMM. No less than Comelec executive director Jose Pio Joson said in a news report, that he wants Sumalipao to be axed ‘to end poll fraud noise.’ Joson was quoted as saying, “Since 1995 he [Sumalipao] has always been involved in alleged fraud. The Commission should not be complacent about it.”
In 2004, Bedol was assigned to Sultan Kudarat shortly before the 2004 elections. He also sat as chairman of the Cotabato City board of canvassers. In these two areas, the count turned out to be problematic. Today, Bedol is the chairman of Maguindanao provincial board of canvassers.
Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos has refused to dismantle the cheating machinery in ARMM by pulling out these implicated election officials and having them investigated. Calls for such decisive action alongside other major electoral reforms before the May 14 elections have consistently fallen on deaf ears both at the Comelec and in Malacanang.
2007 Elections
