Loren to compel PET to show ‘missing’ ballot boxes

Former senator Loren Legarda yesterday said her lawyer would file a motion before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) to compel the House of Representatives to produce the missing ballot boxes in relation to her election protest against Vice President Noli de Castro.

"My lawyer will file a motion to compel the Congress authorities to come up with the ballot boxes or an explanation on where they are," Legarda said during yesterday’s Fernandina Forum at Dencio’s Grill and Bar in Greenhills, San Juan town.

Legarda likewise said she would also ask the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to help her by showing its copies of election returns, which are reportedly missing from safekeeping in Congress.

"There is still an opportunity to see the election returns if we ask the Comelec to produce their copies. We have (photocopies) of the Comelec copies of the election returns. We also have the KNP (Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino) copies of the election returns. There are seven copies. Not all have been lost. Only the Congress copies were lost," Legarda said.

In a statement, Legarda said her camp expected the PET to retrieve about 200 ballot boxes from Congress last Monday, but only 53 ballot boxes were turned over by their custodian.

Legarda said the delivery of the ballot boxes to the PET was in line with the recount ordered by PET of the votes cast for the vice presidential race in May 2004 pursuant to her election protest against De Castro.

During the forum, Legarda made a presentation detailing how the administration allegedly committed electoral fraud during the national elections last year, acts she described as "second generation fraud."

"It is not the ballot that was changed — (there was) no ballot switching — but the election returns, the second generation document that was changed," she said.

In the past, there was ballot box snatching, she said. Now, the election returns are prefabricated or made-to-order, she claimed.

Legarda said election returns are the documents that are tampered with because when you tamper with the election returns, everything else is affected.

She compared two election returns from Mandaue City, Cebu and Angeles City, Pampanga. She said these were written by one and the same person based on the assessment of former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) document analyst Segundo Tabayoyong.

"Tabayoyong, who is a documents expert, said that the handwriting was the same in pattern, in form and in manner of execution," she said. "This means only one person made the election return in the precincts in Mandaue and Angeles City."

She also showed copies of the election returns with the same pattern, with unreadable and small thumb marks and no signatures beside the "tarras," in Pampanga, Bohol, Iloilo and Cebu, indicating that only one person filled out the election returns.

Because of this tampering, she said, the vote margin between her and De Castro is about 70 votes per election return, while the vote margin between President Arroyo and the late presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. is about 100 per election return.

This translates to De Castro’s 2.1-million vote lead over Legarda, and the President’s 3-million vote lead over Poe.

There are about 32,000 sets of excess or fabricated election returns, she said.

"Our sources say these were made by professionals. They are composed by so many fraud experts, golden hands and forgers," said Legarda.

Saying her camp has already deposited about P4 million as a bond to proceed with the PET case, Legarda said she hopes the investigation will be fair.

Legarda said she would respect the decision of the Supreme Court, which is sitting as the PET, if she loses the case fairly. — Sandy Araneta