| The following article was recently emailed to us, but it originally appeared in Newsbreak Magazine
, December 05, 2005 Madame Operator? By Miriam Grace A. Go Newsbreak Assistant Managing Editor President Arroyo probably wasn't lying when she responded to allegations that election officials received bribe money in her presence at her family's La Vista house in January 2004: "Ang masasabi ko lang, walang nagbibigay ng suhol sa harap ko (Nobody gives a bribe in front of me)." When administration operator Michaelangelo "Louie" Zuce testified in the Senate in August this year about the bribing incident that he claims to have witnessed, a former campaign adviser who remains close to the President told NEWSBREAK, "Hindi naman kasi sa La Vista (It wasn't done in La Vista)," referring to a posh village in Quezon City, where the family residence of the President is located. The former adviser says he's familiar with the circumstances surrounding at least two of the meetings that Zuce was talking about, between some regional directors of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Pampanga provincial board member Lilia "Baby" Pineda, before the presidential election last year. Pineda, a close friend and town mate of President Arroyo in Lubao, is the wife of known jueteng lord Rodolfo "Bong" Pineda. As far as he knew, whenever the directors gathered in Metro Manila in the months leading to the presidential elections, they only "dropped by" the Arroyos' La Vista house "to pay a courtesy call [on the President]." After that, the groups would proceed to the Pinedas' house in Greenhills Subdivision in San Juan, "where the payoffs were made." This other version of the story, however, doesn't debunk the issue brought forth by Zuce's testimony-that Comelec officials received what was presumably jueteng money, together with instructions to help the President win in the upcoming polls. And it further raises two crucial questions related to Gloriagate which an impeachment trial or an independent fact-finding body-had they been allowed-could have answered: How many groups and operators worked to ensure the President's victory through legitimate and foul means? And where did they get their orders? The "Hello, Garci" tape revealed a President that was hands-on in the campaign. In the infamous recorded conversations, she made references to vote padding, the non-matching of votes in election documents, and a seemingly pre-determined winning margin of one million votes. We tried to find out if this was an isolated case; that perhaps during the campaign, somebody else-not the President-was directing all the "special operations" that led to her victory. But our interviews with political operators and review of events and documents show very compartmentalized operations by the "unofficial" campaign groups under her. These compartmentalized operations were run by people close to the President, but they did not sit down to "coordinate" with each other as in a committee. Among them, there was no single "bastonero"; no one played the role of an orchestra conductor. Yet, the operations were systematic, complementary, and intricate. It appears that the political lieutenants on top of these parallel operations were getting orders directly from no less than Ms. Arroyo. New Findings Since the year is ending with no clear answers in sight regarding "Gloriagate," NEWSBREAK revisited the 2004 Arroyo campaign. We established the following: There were at least four groups that operated independently of each other. Only the President knew of the businesses of all four. The President worked with unaccountable persons in three of the parallel groups. Ms. Arroyo appears to be the first post-Marcos presidential candidate to have combined and maximized electoral dirty tricks from over half a century, foremost of which were the utilization of the armed forces for partisan activities, and tampering with election results. The alleged large-scale cheating was easily carried out because the election manipulators who honed their skills since the time of President Ferdinand Marcos, and who worked in the campaign of Fidel Ramos, also played crucial roles in the Arroyo campaign. Claudio's Official Group Earlier accounts and evidence made it appear that President Arroyo's campaign was run only by two groups: the official campaign team under the President's liaison to Congress (now also presidential political affairs adviser) Gabriel Claudio; and the shadow-and shadowy-campaign team led by political strategist (now Antipolo congressman) Ronaldo Puno at the behest of presidential spouse Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo. The organization under Claudio included all the political parties in the ruling coalition, the parallel groups that were reaching out to different sectors for the President alone, and the group that took care of the senatorial campaign. This team had then-Defense Secretary (now executive secretary) Eduardo Ermita as chief executive officer. It had an executive committee that served as the policymaking body of the campaign. It was composed of representatives from the member-political parties and from sectoral allies, and chaired by former President Ramos, who is president emeritus of Arroyo's adoptive party, Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats. The Claudio group was the public face of the Arroyo campaign. It was assumed to be doing all the legitimate campaign work. This was put in question, however, when Mindanao-based businessman Rodolfo Galang later surfaced. He executed an affidavit about his alleged connivance with presidential adviser and senatorial campaign manager Conrado Limcaoco to bribe local officials in the South to shift their loyalties from candidate Fernando Poe Jr. to President Arroyo by giving them fertilizer funds from the agriculture department. Limcaoco denied knowing Galang, but the unaccounted fertilizer funds are now the subject of a Senate investigation. Some operators involved in the alleged fabrication of pre-accomplished election forms in the Visayas, as well as post-election vote-padding in Mindanao such as whistle blower Zuce, claim to have been hired or contacted by then presidential political affairs adviser Joey Rufino. As Lakas executive director, Rufino was technically within the structure headed by Claudio. Claudio, in an interview for this article, denied knowledge of Rufino "ever employing operators to conduct dirty tricks...nor do I consider this plausible." Rufino, he said, was too busy settling disputes between allies who wanted to run in the same localities; he was in charge of determining the official candidates in the local elections. (Rufino made a similar denial in a statement before he became sick.) "Within the campaign organization, I remember having constantly reminded ourselves and our staff and our field men to desist from illegal electoral interventions because we were ahead in all the surveys...and way ahead in superiority of our vote-delivery machinery.... We would not have wanted to deprive ourselves the satisfaction and pride of a clean, honest, and convincing victory," Claudio said. During the campaign, Claudio told NEWSBREAK that he was not reporting to or coordinating with the First Gentleman. He also denied knowledge of a second campaign group led by Mr. Arroyo and Puno. Mike Arroyo and Puno Puno's group, the one directly working with the President's husband, was believed to be the "dirty tricks" department, an allegation that both of them have repeatedly denied. Sources say it was particularly responsible for operations to rig the results of pre-election surveys to effect a favorable trend for Mrs. Arroyo. At the height of the campaign, some opposition members raised doubts about the integrity of Trends, the research arm of major polling firms Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia, saying that some of its employees had been secretly working for Puno and were thus manipulating the data in President Arroyo's favor. But this allegation was debunked by Trends, whose CEO Mercy Abad explained to NEWSBREAK at the time the various security measures employed by the company at every phase of the surveys. (Abad is at present a member of NEWSBREAK's advisory board.) After the elections, however, operators working for Puno bragged about their attempts at influencing the survey interviewers in certain provinces. They said they gave the field interviewers "allowances" higher than what they were getting from Trends, and sometimes gave them "comfortable lodging in hotels." One of the sources said they didn't ask the interviewees to change the answers of the respondents. They only directed them to "friendly" barangays and asked them to ask the questions in a way that would lead respondents to favor the President. The operators refused to say if these attempts were successful. Puno's group was also widely believed to be responsible for pre-fabricating election documents-from precinct-level election returns up to city- and provincial-level certificates of canvass-and having them filled with pre-determined numbers of votes. This was most evident in the so-called CBIP (Cebu, Bohol, Iloilo, Pampanga) area, where surveys showed the President to be leading and where the local government officials were her allies, and therefore would not invite suspicion if her margin would be maximized. One of those who worked on this project said they spread out the pre-determined votes in more than 30,000 precincts in 11 provinces. The source said that in this operation, they secured the cooperation of the teachers and election inspectors by allotting P10,000 per precinct. The Puno group included his younger brother Robie, the First Gentleman's younger brother (now Negros Occidental congressman) Ignacio Arroyo Jr., and close allies who joined Lakas only when President Arroyo assumed its leadership, but whose loyalties were with the First Gentleman. These allies served as "brokers" who dealt with the freelance operators who carried out their strategies in the field. Yet, other political operators for the President said Puno's group was "overrated." It clashed in the field with the two other groups that will be named later. Puno's group was believed to be capable of carrying out special operations because the First Gentleman had the power of the purse. Mr. Arroyo's involvement in the special operations (which he had repeatedly denied), however, was not as extensive as originally believed. Neither was he the sole campaign fund-raiser. Little Big Brother It appears now that there is a third and equally powerful group: the one led by President Arroyo's younger and favorite brother, Diosdado "Buboy" Macapagal Jr. This group, according to a businessman-operator who dealt with a member of the group, raised about 35 percent of the campaign fund-the contributions from "legitimate businessmen." The rest of the campaign kitty was raised by Mike Arroyo's group from "other" businesses, the businessman-operator said. Buboy Macapagal's group was reportedly so suspicious of the other groups working for the President that it ordered the wiretapping not only of Garcillano but of Puno as well. "They thought Garci was also working for the opposition. Puno, they suspected he was diverting [campaign] money to his own campaign [for congressman] in Antipolo," he added. A friend of Buboy Macapagal is businessman Ruben Cesar C. Reyes, who has close links with the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Reyes is also close both to Garcillano and Comelec chair Benjamin Abalos. A fourth group was revealed when NEWSBREAK was working on the story about the break-in at the room holding the ballot boxes at the Batasang Pambansa building months after President Arroyo's proclamation (NEWSBREAK, Sept. 12, 2005). We reported that the operation in Mindanao during the canvassing period, which was led by Garcillano, was done in haste and that operators only tampered with the figures in the certificates of canvass. The figures, therefore, could not be supported by the data in the election returns and statements of votes. Since Fernando Poe Jr. had filed a protest, there loomed the possibility that the mismatch in the figures would be discovered. Thus, there was an operation to sneak into the ballot boxes in Batasan the election documents with "corrected" and consistent figures. Antidote Group The ones behind the operation belonged to the "Antidote Group," the most covert bloc in the Arroyo campaign. Very few administration people have heard about the group, and still fewer were familiar with its composition and activities. From what we gathered, its main task, as its name implies, was to "cure" election results in President Arroyo's favor. Its name first cropped up in one of the documents submitted by Zuce to the Senate. In a letter to the President on Nov. 11, 2003, Garcillano-who was not yet commissioner at that time-reminded the President that a vacancy would soon occur in the Comelec and that she should keep him in mind. The letter was endorsed by Rufino, who in his marginal note to the President on the same document, told her: "He [Garcillano] will be a great asset to you. He has a proven track record and can deliver! Part...the Antidote group." A NEWSBREAK source who participated in the post-proclamation Batasan operation said the group's boss was "Mr. Antidote," a code that President Arroyo herself gave the man. The source refused to reveal the identity of Mr. Antidote but said the latter worked confidentially for Presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos before working for President Arroyo. (The source was vague on the nature of Mr. Antidote's work for the two former presidents.) Another source familiar with the Antidote Group said the head of the group is an "operative" specializing in "intelligence work." We got the supposed name of Mr. Antidote from a civilian operator. We checked out this name with a veteran intelligence operator who was part of Antidote, but the latter refused to talk about him except to say that Mr. Antidote is known to most only by an alias. For lack of independent confirmation by another source, we are withholding the name of Mr. Antidote. What we know so far about the Antidote Group are bits and pieces of information that we have managed to get from people who have worked with its members or who are part of it but would not admit that on record. The Cops: Mendoza and Ebdane The accounts of three sources indicate that the Antidote Group includes veterans from the Comelec as well as retired and active-duty police and military officers. "They like to call themselves patriots, because they have in the past worked for both the administration and the opposition...they ensure balance of power in elections," says one who has sat down with some of them. Some of the members of Antidote are also part of the "official" campaign groups of the President and enjoy direct links either to her or to Mr. Mike Arroyo. Known to have at least sat in the meetings of the Antidote Group were Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza and Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. Both police generals were the first two chiefs of the Philippine National Police under the Arroyo regime. One of the sources said a "Batangas Group" was represented in the Antidote Group, and that group included then Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita (now executive secretary). Another source said that "even if it's a military [dominated] group, it was not reporting to Ermita." The source also said Ebdane was "not part of the strategizing. He was just an implementor." Ebdane is closely associated with the First Gentleman. In an earlier interview with NEWSBREAK editors, Ermita downplayed his role in the campaign and pointed to Claudio as the one on top of it. He didn't respond to questions for this article. Our text messages and voice calls to the mobile phones of Ebdane and his aide de camp went unanswered. His office said he was out of town and had no definite date of return. It was the Antidote Group that got former elections official Roque Bello, the "master operator" reputedly to be "better than Garcillano" (NEWSBREAK, Sept. 12, 2005), to lead the Batasan operation. Pineda's Money Bello's post-election Batasan operation was funded by Bong Pineda, according to a police official. In our previous report, we referred to a police general who facilitated the Batasan break-in and who was named to a Cabinet position after the operation. We were referring to Ebdane. It seems that Pineda had a direct line to some members of the Antidote Group. In fact, it was he who introduced Garcillano to Ebdane, according to the same police source. Thus, during the campaign, Garcillano received "royal treatment" from the PNP in his visits to certain areas. It's no surprise then that Ebdane was tagged as the one who hid Garcillano at the height of the "Hello, Garci" scandal and who facilitated the commissioner's "escape" to Singapore. In securing Garcillano when the latter was still in the Philippines, Ebdane tapped the services of a police general who happens to be a business partner of Garcillano and who incidentally is close to Pineda as well. Straddling Between Groups The four groups in the Arroyo campaign apparently had compartmentalized operations, with a number of members-especially those in the official campaign team-apparently finding out about the other groups only after the "Hello, Garci" tape was exposed and NEWSBREAK reported about the Batasan operation. At the most, a few members shuttled between two groups, but never between all four. With no single political lieutenant of the President emerging to be on top of the four groups, Mrs. Arroyo is left as the only person common to all of them. Circumstances point to her as the person to whom the leaders of these groups reported and got orders from. Former Education Secretary Florencio Abad, who represented the Liberal Party in the Arroyo campaign's executive committee, said that during the latter part of the campaign, the President stopped presiding over the committee's meetings. She appeared to be "growing impatient" with the meetings where the status of the campaign in the provinces was being discussed, and showed that she was "giving more importance to being hands-on" in running her campaign. Although Claudio said the President's role was "largely the product that had to be marketed and sold," Abad said "she knew the campaign terrain quite well, down to the details." He said there were instances when she directed where the campaign convoy should go; she knew the municipal leaders by name and the situation in their specific areas. Abad agreed that this tendency toward a hands-on style of management, the "Hello, Garci" conversation, and the fact that no single person seemed to be present in all the other campaign groups that had been revealed, "make it appear that she was indeed the one running the show." Same Old Boys Interestingly, those who were involved in Ramos's campaign in 1992-both in the legitimate and special operations (but mostly the latter)-played key roles in Arroyo's campaign. Ramos himself was with the executive committee of Arroyo's campaign, along with those who started Lakas with him: Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. and Ermita. Claudio was with the Ramos campaign, and so were Rufino and Puno. In fact, the earlier assumption that there was only one dirty tricks department for Arroyo's campaign came from the fact that operators who had supported Puno and Claudio in the past had worked together at the Comelec and the Ministry of Local Government during Marcos's time. It turned out that in 2004 these Marcos-trained operators were dealing with different groups or bosses in the Arroyo camp, bringing along their respective networks of teachers, election workers, and political operators in the field that they had utilized in past elections. "There were simply too many groups that worked for her...but in the end, it was the Antidote that delivered the most important results," says a member of the group who did not reveal much except to confirm or deny information that we verified with him related to the group's activities. "There are stories that would be left untold, because in the first place, without the Garci tape, we would not even be talking about this." -with reports from Glenda M. Gloria and Mia Gonzalez OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
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