Comelec employee charged for stealing ballots

An employee of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will be charged in court after he was caught bringing out four official ballots from the National Printing Office (NPO) in Quezon City.

Comelec Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco told The STAR yesterday Amerol Zubair will be dismissed from the poll body and charged in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court with violation of section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code and article 226 of the Revise Penal Code.

"I have submitted my recommendation to the (Commission) en banc for approval," she said.

Tancangco said four co-workers of Zubair have executed affidavits swearing that they had seen him try to bring out of the NPO premises the four official ballots.

Marines detailed at the NPO arrested Zubair after being tipped off by the four, she added.

Tancangco said Zubair and his lawyer have failed to appear in the hearings called by the Comelec to present his side despite the notices sent to them.

"In fact the investigation has been completed," she said.

On the other hand, Comelec executive director Mamasapunod Aguam told The STAR yesterday he had recommended Zubair, who is his wife’s relative, to Tancangco for a job in the poll body’s printing committee.

Records show Zubair, a casual employee, worked for the Comelec during the 1995 and 1998 elections.

While the NPO was printing official ballots, the Commission en banc awarded last March 12 the job of printing election returns to Ernest Printing Corp., a private company, which offered the lowest bid at P95 for each set of election materials.

Official ballots must be printed at the NPO, but election returns and other materials may be farmed out to private printing companies.

Under Resolution 3731, the poll body ordered the printing of 240,000 sets of election returns, which correspond to the total number of voting precincts throughout the country.

The Commission en banc decided on the contract without any bidding because of lack of time.

But The STAR learned Tancangco had ordered her staff, who are detailed at Ernest Printing, to lock the stockroom and stop releasing rolls of paper to management.

In his letter to Comelec Chairman Alfredo Benipayo, Edwin Co Lim, manager of Ernest Printing, said Tancangco ordered them to stop operation after they have printed 200,000 copies of election returns, even if these do not comprise a complete set.

Last March 26, Benipayo sent Aguam to Ernest Printing to enforce his order that rolls of paper be released from the stockroom to allow the printing of election returns to resume after being suspended for three days.

Ernest Printing cannot complete printing of a set of election returns, comprised of 63 copies, without the complete data from Tancangco’s committee.

Managers of printing companies, which were awarded jobs to print election paraphernalia, told The STAR they would rather deal with Benipayo than Tancangco.

"We feel that she is hostile towards us," a printer said.

Last March 18, Lim was surprised when Tancangco asked for the plates being used to print election returns and copies for the citizen’s arm.

Lim refused to hand Tancangco the plates without any clearance from Benipayo, but he asked the commissioner to put her request in writing.

In her letter, Tancangco said: "These (plates) will be returned on the same day after the en banc meeting."

However, management turned down Tancangco’s request because the plates could be used to reproduce election returns without authorization if they are brought out of the premises of Ernest Printing.