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By Ellen Tordesillas, Vera Files
(Editor’s note: The first part detailed
how commandos of the police Special Action Force switched election
returns during the 2004 national elections.)
Last of two parts
It was no accident that it was
the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police that
penetrated the Batasang Pambansa and stuffed the ballot boxes with
fake election returns to make it look like
Mrs. Gloria Arroyo won the 2004 elections.
Established in 1983 initially to
help combat insurgency and later to “destroy enemy forces that
undermine the nation’s stability,” the police commandos are
trained as a rapid deployment force and to “noiselessly operate in
the shadows.”
In its 25-year history, the elite
unit has not been impervious to the country’s political upheavals.
The Special Action Force joined the February 1986 People Power
revolution that followed the defection of its founder, then Armed
Forces Vice Chief of Staff and Philippine Constabulary-Integrated
National Police chief Fidel Ramos, and toppled President Ferdinand
Marcos.
But in early 2005, some of the
Special Action Force’s own members said they undermined democracy
when the unit switched the election returns on orders of former
national police chief Hermogenes Ebdane Jr.
Ebdane knew fully well and
harnessed the unit’s commando skills. After all, he had served as
that unit’s commander from August 1989 to February 1991.
It also helped that the Special
Action Force was one of the units securing the House.
Had no one talked, the operation
that took place on January 23 and 29 and the first weekend of
February 2005 would have been kept secret.
Pragmatic commander
His colleagues describe Chief
Superintendent Marcelino Franco, who approved the operation as the
unit’s commander at the time, as a “very serious, principled and
highly professional” officer. But they also said that as a leader,
he could be “very pragmatic.”
Franco would later be implicated
in the alleged plan of the Marines and Army Scout Rangers in
February 2006 to withdraw support from President Arroyo.
In his affidavit, former Armed
Forces chief Hermogenes Esperon, then the commanding general of the
Philippine Army, said his two classmates in the Philippine Military
Academy (Class ’74)—Franco and Major-Gen. Renato Miranda, then
commandant of the Philippine Marines—had asked him to join them in
their plan to withdraw support from President Arroyo.
Esperon said this happened in a
late-night meeting on February 23 at the residence of then military
chief Generoso Senga. He said Franco confirmed that “most of the
elements of SAF-PNP will sympathize with those who will march and
withdraw support from PGMA [President Arroyo’s initials].”
Military officers accused of
planning the February 2006 protest activity said Franco knew
firsthand that Mrs. Arroyo cheated in the elections. Unlike those
who are detained and being tried in court-martial for mutiny, no
charges were ever filed against Franco.
Special Action Forces sources
said prior to the Batasan election returns switching operation,
Franco met with Ebdane and then Elections Commissioner Virgilio
Garcillano. He then entrusted the task to Supt. Rafael Santiago, the
commanding officer of the special unit’s Intelligence and
Investigation Division.
Santiago, in turn, brought in
young police officers, including Inspectors Rafael Lero and Samson
Kimayong.
Santiago is said to be the
quintessential intelligence agent. “Now you see him, now you
don’t,” a police officer said.
Chief Inspector Ferdinand Ortega,
who headed the special unit in the Batasan during the election
returns switching operation, appears to be well-liked in police
circles. A colleague finds him “nakakatawang mayabang [a braggart
but amusing].” He is affectionately called “bungo” or skull,
after the famous Baguio City police officer, Bobby Ortega, who was
portrayed in two movies by the late actor Rudy Fernandez.
About 6,000 genuine election
returns were replaced with manufactured returns in the January to
February 2005 operations, said a source from the Special Action
Force.
A fourth operation was planned,
but Chief Inspector Jimmy Laguyo, who by then had replaced Ortega at
the Special Action Force’s unit at the Batasan, refused to
cooperate, the source said. Franco had Laguyo transferred to Abra.
The fourth operation never
materialized. The unit was kept preoccupied by a failed jailbreak at
its headquarters on March 14, 2005, in which suspected Abu Sayyaf
members were killed. The Commission on Human Rights had ordered an
investigation of the unit shortly after the incident.
For a job well done
The efforts of the Special Action
Forces commandos who participated in the Batasan operation did not
go unrewarded. The enlisted personnel were each given P10,000 one
month after the operation.
“May natanggap kaming sobre na
ibinigay sa amin na patago na sabi nila, ‘Ito panggastos niyo. Ito
’yung reward natin sa operation natin sa Batasan’ [We were each
secretly handed an envelope and told, ‘This is for your expenses;
this is our reward for the Batasan operation’],” one of them
said.
He added, “Nung binuksan ko po
’yung envelope, naglalaman po ng P10,000. Hindi ko alam kung
matuwa ako doon o matakot na gastusin ’yun kasi ’yun nga sa
operation na ’yun [When I opened the envelope, it contained
P10,000. I didn’t know if I should be happy or be afraid to spend
it because it was for that operation].”
Another enlisted policeman said
they were summoned to the Special Action Forces office for the
“good news.” He said the higher-up who handed them the envelopes
advised them, “Huwag na lang kayo maingay. Sa atin-atin lang ito
[Don’t talk about this. Let’s keep this among ourselves].”
The switching of the election
returns at the Batasan was caught on video through a mobile phone
camera. ABS-CBN had shown the video, but it went largely unnoticed.
But a commando who took part in
the operation also has in his possession evidence—he calls it
“souvenir”—of the operation: copies of the genuine election
returns.
He said he removed five envelopes
containing the returns from the van he was riding after the team
left the Batasan compound in February 2005 and brought them home
with him. Some of his colleagues did likewise.
The commando said he got curious
and decided to inspect the contents of the boxes that had not been
sealed with masking tape. “Yun ’yung election returns. Dahil po
ako isang botante, alam ko po ang style ng election return [They
were election returns. I’m a voter, so I know the style of an
election return],” he said.
VERA Files was shown the
envelopes containing the returns.
Valuable souvenir
After the recordings of the
wiretapped conversations between President Arroyo and Garcillano on
the cheating in the 2004 elections became public, the police
commandos involved in the Batasan operation realized the value of
the video and election returns in their hands.
Some of them said they all wanted
to make public the evidence they had but feared this would endanger
their lives and those of their families. They then thought of
relocating abroad but they needed money to do that.
Sen. Loren Legarda, who was then
protesting Noli de Castro’s proclamation as vice president, said
in an interview she met with Joel Pinawin, a first lieutenant in the
Army Reserve Corps who acted as liaison for the Special Action
Forces personnel. She was shown a video of ballot boxes being moved
at the Batasan but said the video was rather dark.
“But they were selling it to
me,” she said.
Legarda does not remember the
amount that was asked, but a source close to the unit’s personnel
said the group had hoped to raise P200 million, or P10 million each
for the 20 people involved in the operation.
Said Legarda: “Where will I get
the money? Kakatalo ko lang. Dinaya ako, malungkot, walang trabaho.
Wala akong pera [I just lost. I was cheated, sad, jobless and
penniless]. I told them to do it for the country.”
The tampering and swapping of the
election returns became evident when the Supreme Court, acting as
the Presidential Electoral Tribunal hearing Legarda’s election
protest, opened the ballot boxes for Nalindong and Taraka towns in
Lanao del Sur.
The copies of the returns that
were given to the Commission on Elections, National Citizens
Movement for Free Elections and the dominant and minority parties
showed opposition standard-bearer Fernando Poe Jr. and Legarda
leading Arroyo and de Castro. But the returns in the ballot boxes
retrieved from the Batasan showed the opposite.
Despite the discrepancies, the
Supreme Court dismissed last January Legarda’s petition, citing
insufficient evidence of fraud.
Poe’s suit against Arroyo
before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal was dismissed on March
29, 2005. The tribunal said his widow, actress Susan Roces, could
not replace him as petitioner because “she would not immediately
and directly benefit from the outcome should it be determined that
the declared president did not truly get the highest number of
votes.”
The returns from the 2004
elections, including the fabricated ones, are no longer at the House
of Representatives. In February, shortly after he became speaker of
the House, Rep. Prospero Nograles ordered the ballot boxes
containing the returns moved from the South Wing to the Commission
on Elections. The makeshift room where they were once stored has
been dismantled.
In March, former Speaker Jose de
Venecia Jr. called for an investigation of the 2005 switching of
election returns at the Batasan.
VERA Files is put out by veteran
journalists taking a deeper look into current issues. Vera is Latin
for “true.”
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