EDITORIAL – Closure

The alleged victim of poll fraud is dead, and wiretapped conversations or other forms of illegally acquired communication are inadmissible as evidence. These have not stopped several senators from pushing for a reopening of the investigation on the vote-rigging scandal where the purported smoking gun is a recorded phone conversation between a man named Garci and a woman he addressed as Ma’m. Garci was widely believed to be former election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, while the woman asking him about her vote was widely believed to be President Arroyo.

Nothing was ever established and the “Hello, Garci” tapes were never authenticated by neutral experts. Now an intelligence agent has re-emerged after two years to claim that he was the one who tapped the conversations. Vidal Doble, formerly of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, also claimed he could not make his revelation earlier because his superiors had placed him under detention — a claim denied by the AFP.

As of early evening yesterday, senators were still arguing after a group including administration lawmakers decided to refer Doble’s case to a smaller body. Malacañang, meanwhile, prepared for battle, with officials threatening to bar members of the executive branch from facing the Senate in connection with the scandal. The secretary of justice also announced that his department had obtained documents on an espionage case in the United States that could prove damning for certain opposition figures. Those figures are widely known to include Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who had brought Doble out of hibernation, and deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Will there ever be closure in the vote-rigging scandal? Garcillano has stood firm on his story, denying that he rigged the 2004 vote in favor of President Arroyo. The President’s closest rival, actor Fernando Poe Jr., died several months after the elections. Closure here is unlikely. But if senators are bent on reviving the investigation, they should make sure it would lead this time to pieces of legislation. There are two issues here: poll fraud and illegal wiretapping. A congressional probe of the vote-rigging scandal should lead to electoral reforms. And Doble’s testimony should at least lead to the further fine-tuning of laws governing electronic surveillance. Something more than a political free-for-all should come out of this scandal.