Maguindanao 2004 revisited

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Maguindanao 2004 revisited
Sunday, 12 13, 2009

Media reports about the unearthing of election paraphernalia in Maguindanao sites controlled by the Ampatuans have exhumed ugly memories of what might have been. The repeated mention of municipalities in Maguindanao — familiar to us who fought for the opening of the ballot boxes in the May 2004 presidential and vice presidential elections — is a frightening reminder of the sinister operations that surrounded the stolen presidency for Gloria Arroyo.

Truth, said Winston Churchill, is so precious that it has to be protected by a bodyguard of lies. The manufactured votes in Maguindanao, in favor of Arroyo and Noli de Castro, replicated in many other provinces around the country — principally in vote-rich Cebu, Bohol, Pampanga and Iloilo — guaranteed the manufactured winning margins for Arroyo and Noli de Castro, thereby giving the lords in the Liberal Party and their partners-in-crime from Lakas-Kampi in the Philippine Congress the basis to proclaim Arroyo and De Castro stealthily at dawn on June 30, 2004.

Nationwide, had the elections been honest, the actual votes would have been as follows: FPJ: 6,255,705; Arroyo: 5,743,724; Legarda: 7,384,817; De Castro, 6,682,506.

Let us revisit pages 119-122 of the True Report (By the Minority) on the Canvassing of Votes for Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates in the May 10, 2004, Elections. In Section 86 about Maguindanao the following observations were made:

1. The Committee (referring to Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, et al., Editor) denied the request of counsel for candidates FPJ and Legarda to present a Power Point slide show exposing the provincial CoC for Maguindanao as a product of fictitious and spurious votes coming from 11 municipalities, which had a 99.99 percent turnout, with all the votes going to candidate Arroyo and zero for FPJ.

2. In the municipality of Ampatuan (registered voters: 9,616; voter turnout: 27.67 percent) the manufactured election results were as follows: Arroyo got 9,321, or 100 percent of all the votes, while FPJ got zero!

3. In Datu Piang (registered voters: 17,688; voter turnout: 97.56 percent) Arroyo received 17,250, or 100 percent of all the votes, while FPJ, again, got an improbable zero!

4. In Shariff Aguak (registered voters: 22,854; voter turnout of 99.8 percent) Arroyo received 22,754 votes, or 99.98 percent, while Poe was mercifully given five votes or .02 percent!

5. In Datu Saudi Ampatuan (registered voters: 9,974; voter turnout: 94.67 percent) manufactured results for Arroyo was 8,944 votes and FPJ got only 15.

6. In Mamasapano (registered voters: 10,503, voter turnout: 98.14 percent) the voters gave Arroyo 10,192 votes, or 99.78 percent, and Poe 22 votes only.

7. In Datu Unsay (registered voters: 7,970; voter turnout: 99.69 percent), Arroyo received 7,905 votes, or 99.05 percent, while FPJ got a miserable 40 votes, or .05 percent!

8. In Datu Abdullah Sanki (registered voters: 6,866; voter turnout: 89.08 percent) Arroyo received 6,045 votes, or 99.02 percent, while FPJ received 60 votes.

9. In Talayan (registered voters: 7,114; voter turnout: 93.49 percent) Arroyo got 6,777 votes, or 97 percent, while Poe got a consuelo de bobo of 174 votes.

10. The pattern of voting had been true with Gindulungan, Buluan, Ampaglat. All of these had a voting percentage of at least 93 percent, and in all these places, candidate FPJ received very minimal votes.

11. The total alone for 11 towns in Maguindanao was 109,151 for Arroyo, and 1,471 for FPJ. In other words, in these 11 towns, Arroyo received 98.71 percent of the votes and FPJ received 1.29 percent.

12. There were no actual elections in many places in Maguindanao. In fact, petitions for the exclusion from canvass of the votes from many municipalities were filed on May 12, 2004 at 6:10 p.m., on the ground that no elections took place.

13. The following alterations and erasures were noted by counsel for candidate Villanueva: In precincts 118-A/123-B, under SOV/P No. 000708, Municipality of Datu Udin Sinsuat, Arroyo’s 57 votes became 67; In precinct 10-A the 120 votes of candidate Legarda shrank to 50; In precinct No. 1A in the Municipality of Barira, the 10 votes of Arroyo ballooned to 140.

14. Only 31 election returns, out of an expected 1,687, were turned over to the Senate by the Provincial Board of Canvassers of Maguindanao.

15. Congressman Dilangalen of Maguindanao confirmed that no elections took place in many municipalities, and that it was really improbable for any candidate to have gotten 100 percent of the votes in those municipalities even if elections really did take place. He said that he had many relatives in those places, especially Datu Piang, who were out and out for candidate FPJ; hence, a zero vote for FPJ was an impossibility.

16. A motion for the opening of the election returns for Maguindanao was flatly rejected by the Committee.

17. The foregoing observations, which cast doubt on the veracity of the votes indicated for the candidates; the continuing reservations and objections of counsel for FPJ and Legarda against a canvass because the authenticity of the canvass documents had not been proved, there being no submission by the Comelec of the security marks as basis for determination of authenticity; and, even if there was absolute lack of proper identification of the canvass documents — all were met by an infuriating and mechanical “Noted” by Committee Chairman Pangilinan of the Liberal Party, who allowed the canvass of the CoC for Maguindanao to merrily proceed.

During the national canvass in 2004, we were thwarted at every turn to have the ballot boxes opened and the election returns canvassed, to prove the lie of the manufactured CoCs. Such is the quality of truth in Philippine politics that, aside from burying it, it has to be protected by a vanguard of partisan lackeys and a horde of overlords with sufficient firearms to intimidate voters.

Now that ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia have been unearthed in Maguindanao, we dare the lords of the Liberal Party and Lakas-Kampi to have them opened, their contents inventoried, for the country to confirm the truth of what we were saying all along about the stolen presidency of Arroyo in 2004.

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