THE ballot boxes which could serve as
evidence of the alleged rigging of the results of the 2004
presidential election were hauled off from the South Wing of the
Batasan building amid ousted Speaker Jose de Venecia's call for
another round of investigation.
Yesterday, House reporters were surprised to
see the makeshift storage room at the South Wing lobby already
dismantled and the ballot boxes reportedly transferred to
another storage room at the ground floor of the main building
where they will not be too visible to the public.
Newly appointed House secretary general
Marilyn Yap said she had nothing to with the transfer.
A source said deputy secretary for operations
Artemio Adasa was the one responsible for the transfer.
Adasa was not immediately available for
comment.
De Venecia has said he would file a
resolution "for a wide-ranging investigation with regard to the
expose of the alleged break-in at the House of Representatives."
He was referring to the reported switching of ballot boxes at
the House in February 2005 containing town-level tallies of
votes in the 2004 elections.
De Venecia, who was the one who steered the
House toward the dismissal of all the past impeachment
complaints against the President, was ousted after his son Joey,
co-owner of Amsterdam Holdings Inc. (AHI), blew the whistle on
the allegedly anomalous $329 million national broadband network
deal with China's ZTE Corp.
In March 2006, Newsbreak magazine published
photographs taken by a cellular phone camera of the alleged
preparation of fake election returns (ERs) and the switching of
ballot boxes in favor of Arroyo.
The report said the "corrected" ERs were
brought to the Batasan in four clandestine operations from
January to February 2005, replacing genuine ERs in the ballot
boxes under House custody.
The House minority had claimed then that it
had two witnesses who were part of the group under former
regional election director Roque Bello that allegedly prepared
the 6,000 ERs so that the votes would correspond to the figures
in the province-wide certificates of canvass - the documents
used in the congressional canvassing - which a group headed by
former elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano allegedly
tampered with.
Working with haste, Garcillano's group
allegedly simply switched Arroyo's and Fernando Poe Jr.'s votes.
The examination of the original ERs would have shown the
switching.
De Venecia said he is leading the
investigation now "so that we can put a closure to the Garci-tape
related scandal."
Just recently, a newspaper report said two Philippine
National Police officers were willing to turn state witnesses in
the investigation of the alleged switching of ballot boxes.
- Wendell Vigilia
