Billions in farm funds used for Arroyo campaign

correction:

As is said in my previous post, the garci tapes and jueteng scandal
are just ‘peanuts’ if you compare them with this one. Are we
looking at a significant portion of the iceberg already or are we still at the tip ?
If a priest will ask gma to write down her sins to the people on a standard
size paper,how many pages will that consume ? Or probably she will take a
shortcut and write 3 lines:

* I LIED to the people
* I STOLE from the people specially the farmers
* AND I CHEATED

People will find very hard to explain to their kids on how we ‘tolerate’
sinners as a ‘role model’ and ‘leader’ of our country. A country where
majority are catholics.

It is not too late to repent gloria. Go back to God. Make a confession. Do reparation by stepping down, returning all the money, confessing publicly to all what you know, help the government track down all your corrupt allies. God loves everyone including you but in the end, it is your choice. If you persist in your ways, eternal damnation in the everlasting fire will be your fate.

This may be a little out of my league as an “Audio Expert” – a title I’ve earned from my experience with Mike Defensor last week, but I totally agree with ANAK_NG_JUETENG: we are simply looking at the tip of an iceberg here – but the Gloria-Garci tapes are the RESULT of all this.

I am referring particularly to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) Fund, which financed the issuance of temporary Philhealth cards – from the article above.

My officemate’s father-in-law passed away just before election 2004. Her husband has been an OFW for about TWENTY (20) years, and fortunately, never got sick enough to need to avail of the OWWA medicare funds. When the father died, my officemate went to OWWA, and she got there at the NICK of time – the funds were still intact, but there was a directive from the “Highest- Ups” to tranfer the funds to Philhealth.

A couple of weeks later, the funds – half-a-million pesos worth, were gone. Gone where?

Hello, Garci?

Sick, ain’t it?

corrections (Sorry for some grammatical blunders. My emotions get the better of me.)

Why wouldn’t Arroyo file libel suits against the likes of PCIJ?

A country with a very low liteacy rate will forever be a victim to people like PGMA.

Additional:

Do you agree that she is the only one among the 84 million Filipinos who could run this country?

If this report, which I believe is true, do not wake up the 84 million Pilipinos as to the corruption and cheating of the president, I do not know what else do we need to convince us that she does not belong to be the leader of this country.

It is time to get rid of her and all her cronies and cohorts who are just as corrupt as she is because they are primarily the benficiaries of all her crimes to the people.

Again, I implore all the victimes of these crimes to RISE and get rid of her in any way necessary! She should be made to pay for all her crimes including all her family members who also benefited, with watever penalty they deserve including the death penalty.

Benigno. you must have voted for her and her cronies and must be one of the beneficiariy. I am not surprised that you want her in the helm as long as possible.

umiksina naman itong si american idol benign0, wala ka naman magawa rito sa ikakabuti. satsat ng satsat , magtrabaho ka na lang para sa bansang amerika mo.

how PGMA file libel case to pCIJ? PGMA not sure right? if this post is true then naku lalo madidiin yan si GMA.

(I should have posted this elsewhere, but i want those who have not read it get the chance to do so. This is from Malaya)

The Operators of Arroyo

Around this time last year, some of the political operators who helped President Arroyo win in the 2004 elections were called to work again. The month before, on Aug. 8, 2004, the President filed her reply (with a counter-protest) to the election protest of actor Fernando Poe Jr., her closest rival. Poe had alleged that Arroyo’s votes were padded by more than one million and thus reversed the results of the election in her favor.
There were two ways Poe wanted the votes verified, both involving revisiting the election returns (ERs). The documents accomplished by teachers who man the polling precincts, the ER is the first step in consolidating the ballot count. In the absence of any manipulation, it should reflect the true number of votes. The figures from the ERs are then consolidated in the municipal statement of votes (SOVs), and the figures in the SOVs are totaled in city or provincial certificates of canvass (COCs).

For Luzon and the Visayas, Poe asked for the “ER-down” counter-checking. Through this approach the totals in the ERs would be compared with the ballots from the corresponding precincts. His camp was convinced that in the President’s bailiwicks in these island groups, the figures in the ERs, SOVs, and COCs were consistent since these were supposedly accomplished before the elections, and were switched with the genuine forms before the local canvassing.

For Mindanao, he wanted the “ER-up” approach. The figures in the ERs would be added up again to check if the SOVs reflect the accurate totals, then the SOV figures will be totaled and checked against the figures in the COCs. (This is the move that President Arroyo’s allies in Congress refused to do during the canvassing of presidential and vice presidential votes.) Poe was convinced that in this southern island, operators for President Arroyo left the ERs and SOVs alone and just tampered with the figures in the COCs.

In questioning or proving President Arroyo’s victory, therefore, the election returns would be the most crucial documents.

Switching ERs

So starting September 2004, or three months after President Arroyo was proclaimed winner, a group hired by the administration reportedly started printing ERs that they intended to fill up and then switch with the genuine ERs that were in some of the ballot boxes being kept in the House of Representatives.

The target of the operation was ERs from the Muslim Mindanao area and surrounding provinces, where the alleged vote padding was done only in the COCs. Apparently, the ER-switching was meant to fix the records to pass future scrutiny. The figures in the new ERs, when added up, would now be consistent with the totals in the COCs.

The administration has repeatedly denied allegations of cheating.

But this is the story that six operators who worked for President Arroyo told NEWSBREAK in recent interviews. We sought them out as we tried to complete the picture of what actually happened during the presidential elections. Most of them are long-time NEWSBREAK sources, and had provided information in our series of reports on poll fraud last year.

They said that even if they revealed damaging information regarding the elections, they doubt if the opposition would really go out of its way to identify them and ask them to surface. “Some of them have utilized us in the past and they will be needing us in the future,” one of them said. For security reasons, however, these sources shall remain unidentified.

One of the sources entered the room in the Batasan complex and participated in switching the fabricated ERs with the original ones in January and February this year. His participation was confirmed by two other sources, one of them a police officer who belonged to the group that planned this post-proclamation operation.

The other sources were privy to this Batasan operation because they belong to the small circle of operators who carried out the padding of Ms. Arroyo’s votes before elections and after canvassing in various regions nationwide.

The President, her close advisers, and officials of her party have maintained that she won in the elections fair and square. If the accounts of her own operators are to be believed, however, the administration not only planned to cheat way before the May 10, 2004, elections, but continued tampering with the presidential votes even after Poe had died in December 2004, and just before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal dismissed with finality his protest in March 2005.

Testing the Waters in 2001

Three sources, who did special operations for the senatorial candidates of the People Power Coalition in 2001, said Ms. Arroyo and her strategists, as early as then, were already studying how vote-rigging could be done for her possible candidacy in 2004. At the time, she had just assumed the unfinished term of ousted President Joseph Estrada, and was therefore eligible to run to get her own mandate.

On May 18, 2001, the Friday after the senatorial elections, President Arroyo reportedly met with election lawyer Roque Bello, a retired regional director of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in his 60s who is known in political circles to have the sophistication and the right contacts within the poll body to influence the votes to favor whoever his principal is. We were able to reach Bello on his cell phone last August 2, but he declined to give an interview.

In that 2001 meeting, the President was supposed to have been given Bello the orders to make sure Ralph Recto would win a full six-year term, to prevent Francis Pangilinan’s votes from being shaven, and to keep hardline opposition candidates from winning.

What the President actually wanted from Bello at the time was to effect a 13-0 sweep for her slate, one of the sources said. The President, he disclosed, was apparently aware of how Bello was said to have achieved for former President Ferdinand Marcos’s slate the 21-0 sweep during the Interim Batasang Pambansa elections in 1978. Still, some opposition candidates “who also operated” slipped into the winning circle.

“She realized [from the 2001 results] that [unlike during the dictatorship] it is no longer possible to carry out special operations for entire slates; individual candidates pay for operators. She learned that it would be easier if she focused on her votes alone,” another operator said.

In early 2004, the President reportedly considered Bello and Garcillano for the two commissioners’ seats about to be vacated at the Comelec. Garcillano was eventually named and on February 19 started a series of meetings with local Comelec officials at the residence of alleged jueteng lord Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda in Greenhills, San Juan. The meetings continued until March.

Bello, however, was reportedly tapped to devise a strategy to get a pre-determined number of votes for the President. One of those who worked in Bello’s group said Bello proposed that genuine ballots be filled up before the elections and switched with the ballots that voters will cast at the precincts. He reportedly explained that working on the ballots would mean that the succeeding documents, from the ERs up to the COCs, would be “clean” and pass any scrutiny.

By April, the President’s strategists decided to abandon Bello’s proposal because they deemed that dealing with the ballots would be a lot costlier and would involve more risk of getting discovered. They left the ballot stage out of their strategy and opted for filling up genuine ERs, SOVs, and COCs with pre-determined numbers of votes. The forms were provided by the Comelec.

‘Blackjack,’ the Operator

The wholesale switching of pre-fabricated election forms was done in a few provinces in Luzon, particularly Ilocos Sur and the Arroyo’s home province of Pampanga, and in the entire Visayas. The Visayas operation, particularly in Cebu, was considered more sophisticated because the administration effected an artificial dramatic increase of voters’ population and registered “ghost precincts.” This was to justify the lopsided share of votes that operators would enter into the prepared election forms.

The regional and provincial election officials whose cooperation was needed for this operation were planed in to Manila and billeted either at the Aloha Hotel or at the Grand Boulevard Hotel, both along Roxas Boulevard. The “production line,” sources said, was in safehouses in the target provinces.

“Nobody would be too stupid to bring in those bulky ERs and COCs in the hotels,” one of them said. He said that the safehouse in Cebu was rented for six months, but was occupied only from March to June 2004. The safehouse in Iloilo was located in a private subdivision. The forgers of signatures (called “golden arms”) and those who thumbmarked the forms (called “pianistas”) were flown in from Manila, the sources said.

The master operator, or the one who gave direction to negotiators and bagmen, for the three regions in the Visayas, was said to be Victor Rigor, who was a liaison between Malacañang and the then Ministry of Local Government during the Marcos regime. This means that Rigor, now in his mid-50s and known in the political circle as “Blackjack,” was connected to the agency in the same years that Ronaldo Puno, Ed Soliman, and Gabriel Claudio were there. The three worked in Arroyo’s campaign, either officially or in the shadow campaign teams. Puno is a strategist closely identified with the First Gentleman, and is now congressman of Antipolo City. Soliman is an undersecretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government. Claudio was the campaign manager of the President last year and is at present the presidential adviser on political affairs.

NEWSBREAK was unable to reach Rigor, but one of his operatives confirmed the information.

This operator said Rigor differentiates his work from cheating, which is “the changing of the election results.” He said Rigor would maintain that what he does is just “influencing” the outcome of the election by a vote-delivery system.

Vote Padding

The Arroyo camp was confident that with the fixed votes coming mainly from the Visayas, the President would be able to win by at least one million votes. However, when the results from Poe’s bailiwicks in Luzon came in, the President’s strategists estimated that the votes could wipe out her margin from the Visayas.

Dagdag-bawas was then carried out in the Muslim region and a few neighboring provinces in Mindanao.

“They panicked, so Garcillano’s operators just switched votes indiscriminately,” one of the operators said. Since the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was Poe’s stronghold, the easiest way to pad Arroyo’s votes there was to just switch her totals with Poe’s in the COCs, the source pointed out.

Evidence in the custody of the opposition—including the fifth copy of the ERs that they were entitled to under the law, but which the police and military confiscated in a raid in Rizal—seem to support the accounts of the administration operators.

An administration strategist said that the top 11 provinces where the padding of votes for the President was maximized were (according to the percentage of votes they contributed, from the highest): Cebu, Pampanga, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Bohol, Southern Leyte, Zamboanga del Sur, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat, and Basilan. The padded votes amounted to 1.2 million.

Arroyo officially finished with 12,905,808 votes, against Poe’s 11,782,232. If the alleged padding of votes is true, then her lead of 1.12 million is well within the margin provided by the operation.

The extent of the vote-padding acknowledged by the source is not very far from estimates that other camps have come up with.

Verzola Study

Roberto Verzola, an engineer teaching at the UP, published a study on the results of the 2004 elections based on the ER-based quick count of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel). He said the ERs from Namfrel, although incomplete, already indicated a total vote padding of 837,454 in favor of President Arroyo—mostly from the “source” provinces acknowledged by the administration strategist.

Sixto Brillantes, who was Poe’s counsel in the election protest, said that based on the evidence they have, the extent of the cheating was between 1.3 million to 1.5 million votes.

Verzola and Brillantes separately pointed out that when Namfrel stopped its quick count, Arroyo’s lead over Poe was only about 600,000 votes. At the time, there were still 4 million votes from Poe’s bailiwicks that had yet to be counted, and only 1 million uncounted votes from Arroyo’s areas.

In a briefing with journalists in August, Verzola said that based on the Namfrel figures, President Arroyo could have won over Poe by only 77,000 votes, but only because the “highly questionable” votes from Central Visayas and the ARMM were included.

To Poe’s camp, this means that if the votes from these two regions would be corrected, Poe could emerge the winner, with a lead of 200,000 to 300,000 votes over Ms. Arroyo.

So when Poe filed his protest, according to administration operators, the Arroyo camp intended to “correct” the incriminating ERs from Mindanao that were in the ballot boxes in Batasan. This was when Bello and his network of operators were again called in.

Clandestine Trips to Batasan

The operator from Bello’s group said that the questioned Mindanao provinces involved 10,000 ERs, but 4,000 were “duly corrected” before these were sent to Manila during the canvassing. Using official paper from Comelec, they tried printing the 6,000 more ERs from September to November 2004.

He said “wastage resulted [because] the ERs could not be reproduced exactly as the ones done by Ernest Printing,” referring to Comelec’s official printer of ERs for last year’s polls. They couldn’t source a numbering machine, a Heidelberg similar to what Ernest Printing used.

In mid-December, however, a contact of Bello was able to “borrow” the numbering machine from Ernest Printing. The operator said they printed the ERs during the Christmas week. The ERs were accomplished by “golden arms” and “pianistas” again.

The source said they made “four clandestine entries” into the Batasan in January and February 2005. He said a police general helped them in the operation. Policemen guarded the room of ballot boxes. He said the guards “looked the other way” when they entered, which was either late Sunday evening or early Monday morning.

The last entry, the source said, was made the weekend before Valentine’s Day. The police official who facilitated their entries was named to another government agency immediately after the operation.

As election campaigns go, the operators said, they consider their work completed once their principal has been proclaimed. After the proclamation comes the “cleanup,” when they close headquarters, abandon safehouses, recall those assigned in the field, and hopefully count victory bonuses.

For their biggest candidate last year, they noted, their “cleanup” was of a different kind.

Correction: From newsbreak un article and not from malaya. Sorry.

I agree with Benign0 – Filipinos have short term memory. I read in the news Imee Marcos was saying: Why blame Marcos for the huge foreign debt? And no reactions were heard. Can you imagine!!

When GMA is gone, I bet another Marcos will return to the scene. Dahil nga: Filipinos have short term memory, and we never learn.

The govt could be wagging the dog again thru the NSA govt so we should take care of ourselves all especially those who are using the MRTs and the LRTs and avoid crowded places. Last week NSA warned of terrorist attack and boom !!!! Explosion in Mindanao, now NSA again saying next target could be Manila. http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=14674.

We cannot blame our politicians for corruptions and for all Ka lechehan in our gov’t. it’s the system that really makes it possible! hindi kaya ng 1 tao lang para baguhin ang system! all our politicians should resign! and try to get noble and honest filipinos to lead us! which is close to impossible! kaya nga doom forever na tayo dahil wala na talaga! magdasal na lang tayo na mamatay na lahat ng pulitiko sa bansa na to! give me one politician na clean and honest na ni isang sentimo di nagnakaw sa bayan! wow! I can’t believe this country has gone to the dogs! napaka hopeless talaga! buti na lang alis na kmi ng family ko tomorrow hehehe! at migrate na kami! while everyone is fighting here and politicians kept stealing money from our country wala na kami! sana di nila moconvert mga pesos nila to dollars para pagbagsak ng p&^*@ bansa na to! 1,000,000 to a dollar$ na palitan! at wala na halos halaga mga ninakaw nila! and by that time. na magka civil war at mawalan na ng pera ang bansa syempre babagsak ang economy and maybe a change in the whole system and leaders. tsaka na ko babalik at cgurado mura na mga lupa! hehehe!

di pa naman hopeless ang pilipinas, especially the people, we are known for bieng resilient d ba?? kailangan lang gisiging ang natutulog na nationalismo, love for country baga … anyway, this is going to be an interesting week, we might actually get to choose what is good for the country

mabuhay!

And they say we are a poor country! Look, we can spend so much money to buy someone a term in Malacanang? lol! We hardly have food on the table but the money for it fueled Arroyo to Malacanang? Rejoice! We have proven we are rich!

Juan de la Cruz is dying because his life line is syphoned for one going to Malacanang and host of other seats to the senate, congress, governatorial seats, and many more seats down to the barangay halls. Ha ha ha! I could die laughing over our stupidity!

Ha ha ha!

In Bukidnon, Governor Joe Zubiri the father of Migs has been distributing fertilizer and corn seedlings. Kasama na rin si Migs. Ang Philhealth cards. Public school teachers were required to submit a list for recepients of the cards. The distribution of the card in the region was abused by local official because several recepients are not qualified to receive the cards which is supposedly for the indigent.

My friends in DILG 10 also informed me that GMA asked them to talk/persuade to some board of canvassers.

I believe that if we cannot count on the elite for their support, we will bring the battle to their home court. If it’s only their own asses their looking after, then that is where we will kick them.

Deny them money! As consumers, we can wield power that is supreme, without equal, consummate.

I would suggest that a massive BOYCOTT be our last alternative prior to an EDSA-type mobilization. I therefore propose that we take the following course of actions:

1. Identify GMA’s supporters in Congress and make a list of their companies and business interests.

2. All information may be sent in to a blogpage.

3. Verify these information with DTI, SEC, or local (municipal/city) records

4. Prepare a list for verified entries in such manner that the priority targets are indicated, complete with a timetable (this will enable us to get feedback if the boycott is effective based on reaction we will get from media)

5. Publish it in one PCIJ blogpage including the product brands, if any

6. Print the list and distribute to everyone in your neighborhood

7. Boycott said businesses, products, or services.

8. If these congressmen will still not sign the impeachment we will move to include adjoining targets: GMA’s patrons from the business sector, cronies, partymates, and cabinet members to force them to dump her government

9. Repeat steps 2 to 7

10. If the congressmen will still refuse to sign we will include all financial institutions, both go’vt and private, pro-GMA or not, like banks, the stock market, the money exchanges (hold on to your foreign currencies), avoid paying taxes, avoid securing gov’t permits, avoid riding the MRT/LRT, denying other sources of income for the gov’t, Then all neutral, apathetic, fence-sitting, or unfriendly businesses will be included, resulting in paralysis of the whole economy.

If everything else fails (meaning, GMA is still not impeached, resigned, or overthrown), mass leave of absence in gov’t and private offices; sit down strikes; prayer vigils headed by Bishops, Pastors, Imams, and all clergy; picket lines in transportation terminals (airports, LRT/MRT stations, piers); blockade of NAIA, Customs areas in North and South Harbors; blockade of all major thoroughfares by transport groups; student walkouts in all schools; walkouts in Ayala, Ortigas, and Binondo business districts; walkout in camps Crame, Aguinaldo and all other major police and military camps – will be the final blow.

Let’s see how The Great Economist makes her way out through this.

to tongue in, anew,

TONGUE IN, AMORIN!!!
YOU’RE NAME DOESN’T FIT WHAT YOU’VE JUST WRITTEN, ANG HABA PA NAMAN PERO WALANG MANINIWALA SA IYO DAHIL SA PANGALAN MO!
MAGTINDA K ANA LANG NG TAHO!
KUNG GUSTO KANG PANIWALAAN NG MGA BLOGGERS, MAGPALIT KA NG PANGALAN MO.
GAWA MO PANG BABUYIN ITONG SITE NA ITO! BINBIGYAN NA NGA TAYO NG PAGKAKATAON NA I-EXPRESS ANG SARILI NATIN DITO, BABABUYIN MO PA!!! ALIS DYAN! SIGURO PAKAWALA KA NI GMA NA TUTA!

Kung hindi po ako nagkakamali, noong campaign period, ibinatikos na ito kay GMA. Then, after a few weeks or months, itinigil na. Ngayon, andyan na naman. Bakit po ba ganun?

Ang naiisip ko po kasi, kung may malakas silang ebidensya, noon pa ay kinastigo na si GMA noon ng korte o ng anumang ahensya na may kapangyarihan para panagutin ang presidente. Baka naman tulad lang din ito ng iba pang paratang sa kanya na hindi naman mapatunay-tunayan dahil base lang sa mga hearsay or worse, hinala.

Bottomline, wala pa pong napapatunayan sa proper forum.

Peace (“,)

Bottomline, wala pa pong napapatunayan sa proper forum by timtim

problem here lies with the fact na yaw nga ni gloria lumahok sa proper forum eh.. kulet nyo! sabi sya ng sabi na ready sya to face the impeachment court just to prove her innosence. But ganun tlga nature nya she does’nt mean what she says. Just like when she said na di na sya tatakbo. Ganun po and presidente nyo sinungaling! Mga tanga lang po at utouto ang naniniwala sa sinungaling. At katangahan na rin po natin kaya ko tayo andito sa sitwasyon natin. Kaya po magbago na po sana tayo. Lets banish all these bad memories starting with gloria. A president who instead of welcoming a process that would prove her innosence desides to stonewall it by any or all means necessary. Big picture guys only a guilty person would resort to such blatant actions.

I call on everyone to remember the names and faces of the members of the majority in congress who obviously are trying to fool the Filipino people. Come election day, let us make sure these people are not given the mandate and authority they are now trying to abuse and misuse. It’s no doubt, this administration is the dirtiest in the history of our nation. GMA will forever be remembered as the WORST PRESIDENT the Philippines has ever had. She could sacrifice everything,.. the people, the country, even her soul just to stay in power.

Patulan ko pa ba reply ni Gregori? Obviously he is confused. Wag ako murahin mo Gregori. Hindi ko kailangang paniwalaan mo ako. Isa pa, kung hindi mo alam kung saan nanggaling yung pseudonym, you don’t have the right to ask me to change it. Halata namang bagito ka dito. hehe.

If nothing good can come out of your mouth, then put your tongue in anew, diba Gregori?

tounge in…

I think you ahve a point there, that is one also of telling gloria that we cannot just accept her panloloko (sabihin ba naman na impeach me pero trankado naman ng mga ka alyado di ba panloloko ito!). I-boycott ang lahat ng producto na pag aari ng mga ka alyado ni Gloria na congressman. kung pwede pa nga wag na tayong magbayad ng buwis.Kaya lang tayong ordinaryong manggagawa walang magagawa dyan dahil kaltas kaagad sa sweldo natin yung buwis.

Nahiya ka pa ba? jun2001? Magkano ba lagay sayo ni mareng GMA?

Alam mo kasi ganito yan… kapag pinagusapan ang relihiyon at negosyo ang unang pumapasok Iglesia, El Shaddai. Pero una mong banat JIL?

Umamin ka na… Too obvious! politically motivated yang mga patutsada mo!

[…] In the past 12 months, toe-to-toe with the well financed and organized mainstream media, we were able to cover with the same zeal and rigor that we put to our investigative reports the developments in the political and social spheres, notably the “Hello, Garci” recordings, the charges of massive electoral fraud and the use of public funds for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s campaign, her botched and much tainted impeachment process, the spirited proposals for charter change, the Venable and other secret lobby contracts, 20 years of Edsa 1, Arroyo’s declaration of a state of national emergency, and other tragedies like the “Wowowee” stampede and the Southern Leyte mudslides. […]