Election watchdog Kontra Daya hit the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for counting the highly-tainted votes from Maguindanao. Kontra Daya joined other groups in a motorcade, June 26.
Fr. Joe Dizon, Kontra Daya spokesperson, castigated Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos for “his shameless efforts” to put Team Unity’s Miguel Zubiri on the 12th slot.
Dizon said, “It is so obvious that the Comelec made a hocus-pocus in Maguindanao. Abalos, Lintang Bedol and other Comelec officials have no credibility at all to claim that what they have now are authentic election documents.”
Abalos said that the Provincial Board of Canvassers (PBoC) will be the one to authenticate the election documents. Dizon asked, “Who are they fooling here? The PBoC is composed of Bedol’s men.”
Kontra Daya urged the Comelec to set aside votes from Maguindanao and to declare Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III as senator.
Furthermore, Dizon questioned the logic behind the counting of votes in Maguindanao. “How can the witnesses of fraud testify against Bedol’s men? Their lives are already at risk. For them, going to Maguindanao is like committing suicide.”
Dizon also slammed Comelec for denying logical demands put forward by opposition lawyers.
Dizon said, “We were right on saying from the start that the cheating machinery of the Arroyo administration in 2004 has never been dismantled. In fact, the same cast of characters in 2004, led by Abalos, figured in this year’s tainted elections. Their patron, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is all the more culpable.”
Dizon asserted, “Arroyo did everything to hide the glaring truth in the Hello Garci scandal. She and Virgilio Garcillano have not paid for their crime of subverting the will of the people. The other Garci boys remain unscathed and managed to rig the recent polls.”
Dizon mentioned election officers assigned in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) such Bedol, Rey Sumalipao, Jubiel Surmieda and Renault Macarambon.
Kontra Daya asked the Philippine Senate to investigate the unresolved “Hello Garci” scandal and the massive fraud in the recent mid-term elections. “Electoral reforms will prove futile unless an honest-to-goodness investigation on the Hello Garci tapes would have been conducted,” Dizon said. #
