Truth is (still) an ostrich

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Truth is (still) an ostrich
Sunday, 11 13, 2005

There should be no mistaking where my biases lie: the truth. So that when the People’s Court was convened, I said that here, at last, is the forum where everyone may now come forward to present evidence that should have been properly laid bare before the Senate as an impeachment court.

With its proceedings not being cramped by the strict observance of the technical rules of procedure and evidence, one would have expected the People’s Court to welcome prime witnesses who are ready, willing, able and available to expose the lie that Gloria won the elections fair and square. One would have been treated to a parade of witnesses who’d “been there and done it,” who would have regaled the nation with first-person accounts of what they saw or what they did to either abet or forestall the most massive election cheating in the country’s history.

But from what transpired last Wednesday at UP - where the People’s Court had convened to received evidence on Electoral Fraud - anyone hopeful that the truth would finally be exposed in all its unalloyed ugliness and distorted convolutions could only have left the People’s Court with a nagging, or even annoying, feeling of unease.

Not a few of those who were present in that session came away with a perception that, truly, they have seen the ostrich - but what the heck was it doing by burying its head in the sand? Where the hell is the demonstrable, palpable, ineluctable truth? Where were the witnesses? Where were the evidentiary documents?

Sure, everybody knows the truth that Gloria stole the election. Sadly, in the impeachment proceedings in the House, what they called a “triumph of the rule of law” (which was actually the tyranny of coerced and suborned numbers) provided a procedural technicality that perverted the quest for truth.

With the People’s Court, we were hoping that the truth would be packaged in a solid body of evidence showing what everyone has known all along, and not an incomplete sighting of an ostrich which leaves us dissatisfied because its head is buried in the sand. We want the whole unobstructed view, from head to foot, and all the parts in between. But after a whole day’s presentation, the evidence of electoral fraud everyone was waiting for was still buried in the sand.

There was not much that was presented that everyone didn’t already know. An exception was the masterful presentation by questioned-documents expert Segundo Tabayoyong on second-generation election fraud perpetrated principally in Cebu, Bohol, Iloilo and Pampanga through the use of prefabricated election returns (ERs), and the first-person account of Hadjii Dalidig on dagdag-bawas in Lanao del Sur.

Tabayoyong’s presentation should have been followed by witnesses who had hands-on participation in the perpetuation of the fraud or in its investigation. But the details of the charges were largely ignored. There were no witnesses. There were no documents authenticated. Only generalities.

We expected evidence to show proof that Cebu was a nest of manipulators who committed fraud in behalf of the Gloria-Noli tandem against FPJ-Loren. But witnesses and documents proving the prefabrication of ERs to favor Gloria and Noli were not presented. Again, why did the People’s Court fail to muster the expertise of those in the KNP who prepared The True Report of the Minority during the national canvass? The myth about Cebu electing a president would have been shattered. Why was this overlooked?

And after the PowerPoint presentation on the dagdag-bawas operations in Mindanao - where Gloria and Noli benefited immensely from the Garci operations, after the prefabricated ERs had failed to neutralize the tsunami of votes for FPJ-Loren from the Lingayen-Lucena corridor - it would have been opportune to present the details of the dagdag-bawas. It would have been time to present the face of the solid, ineluctable truth. Unfortunately, the People’s Court simply overlooked this.

Why was Rashma Ali of Tipo-Tipo, Basilan, who turned over her entire cache of ERs to the camp of FPJ, not in the roster of witnesses? Why didn’t the People’s Court seek out the person in the FPJ-Loren camp who is now in custody of the ERs for Tipo-Tipo? We ask the same questions for the ERs, now held by the FPJ-Loren camp, for provinces that had been rich sources of manipulated results: Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu, etcetera. By all means, the People’s Court should have bothered to secure these documents, and should have asked the persons who analyzed them to authenticate the same during the proceedings.

And why was the affidavit of Ali - a virtual smoking gun - on the circumstances surrounding the transposition of the votes from the ERs to the Statement of Votes by Precincts not even presented? Harriet Demetriou and Ben Geronimo would have been the most logical witnesses to prove the link of the kidnapping of Ali’s relatives exposed in the Garci Tapes to the fraudulent election results in Tipo-Tipo, but they, too, were ignored.

I am asking these questions, because as I have declared at the beginning of this article, my biases lie with the truth.

Truth will not hide its face in qualified witnesses and in authentic documents. The truth, coming from them, will fly against any politician’s claim. Coming from them, the truth will be a soaring and liberating spirit that adamantly refuses to stay inert and hidden under the oppressive rock of deceit.

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