Three rulings will resume corruption in military

“It’s old hat.” Thus does election lawyer Romy Macalintal dismiss as “trickery” the discrepancies in the PCOS count of mayoralty votes in Compostela, Cebu, in 2010.

“Macalintal is talking through his hat,” critics of the PCOS retort, however.

Macalintal in mid-March had challenged the critics. Show even just ten of the 35 million ballots cast in 2010 to have been accidentally or purposely miscounted for another candidate, he said. If not, forever hold your peace.

That same week began a court-supervised manual recount of the Compostela PCOS tally. It showed not only ten but 1,254 discrepancies. First recounted were the four precincts of Barangay Poblacion, in the race between former mayor Ritchie Wagas and incumbent Joel Quiño. The manual process showed the PCOS to have wrongly credited some votes to Wagas and most to Quiño, for a total of 1,254 miscounts. The court conducted the recount, which Wagas sought not to wrest the mayoralty but only to find out the truth. The Comelec had ignored his protests.

Reacting, Macalintal wrote: “The ‘discrepancy’ was not because the PCOS ‘miscounted’ the ballots of Quiño.  It was a man-made ‘discrepancy’ or a sure case of a post-election operation where the election shenanigans removed or took away the ballots of Quiño with the intention of decreasing his valid ballots. Such a scheme is an old trick in election protest cases, dating back to many years of manual election in our country. In other words, lumang tugtugin na po ito. To rule otherwise would make it very easy for a losing candidate to ‘win’ the protest by merely removing or taking away the valid ballots of the winner and claim victory thereafter.”

PCOS critics rebut that Macalintal knows not what he’s talking about. The court merely recounted the physical ballots, and this showed that the PCOS had tallied more than the actual ballots cast, they say. There is no proof in Macalintal’s claim that sinister forces stole Quiño’s ballots before the court recount. Imputing malice adds insult to injury. It’s Macalintal who must now shut up, they add.

*      *      *

Three related events ensued last week. At the Sandiganbayan the controversial plea-bargain of Gen. Carlos Garcia to lesser offenses was upheld, so he can now walk free. At the Ombudsman the other generals charged like Garcia with plundering military funds were exonerated for insufficient evidence. At the Supreme Court, the plundered assets of Garcia’s thief-mentor Gen. Jacinto Ligot were released from impounding.

The events have the effect of rendering futile any whistleblowing on crooked generals. They make it easier for such generals to pocket moneys that otherwise should go to military supplies and operations.

The Sandiganbayan did not just lessen Garcia’s offense from life-term plunder to mere direct bribery and facilitating money laundering. Its three-magistrate division also made the investigators, prosecutors, and witnesses appear so dumb. Hopefully the ponente did not succumb to any gifts from the Malacañang undersecretary who had called him in behalf of a Cabinet man during the Arroyo Presidency.

Garcia’s P303.2-million bank deposits and New York City condos — clearly beyond his earning capacity — were presented in court. Still the Sandiganbayan said the case investigators did not gather enough proof of plunder. Presented as well were Garcia’s wife Clarita’s letters to the US Customs detailing their stolen wealth, including the $100,000 confiscated from their sons. Still the prosecutors supposedly could not prove that the loot was Garcia’s. The state auditor who dug up the dusty files from the military warehouse testified to the pattern of plundering. Still the court said the auditor did not show Garcia’s direct participation.

The Sandiganbayan said the government would have lost the case against Garcia anyway. So the plea bargain supposedly was better, since it comes with Garcia’s return of P135.4 million in loot.

And that forfeited amount from Garcia, the court said, is even bloated. So the government should be happy. Garcia’s stolen wealth supposedly is only P60.6 million.

The court deduced that from Clarita’s statement to US Customs that they have five income sources: two fruit plantations, a day-care, Garcia’s salary as military comptroller, and kickbacks from military contracts. The court simply divided the P303.2 million by five to come up with the conclusion that only a fifth, P60.6 million, was ill gotten.

It did not matter to the court that the fruit plantations could have been founded precisely with stolen military money on March 22, 2002. From the records, Garcia became assistant comptroller the year before, under General Ligot. Too, his salary from the time he was a military school cadet till he was sacked as a general never amounted to even a third of P60.6 million. The day-care might have been a money-laundering front.

Speaking of which, it was Ligot, eight other generals including three ex-Armed Forces chiefs, and colonels whom the Ombudsman cleared of plunder charges. This is because, according to the six-man case panel, the accuser Col. George Rabusa supposedly did not give enough proof too.

Rabusa had been exposed as a cohort during the investigation of Garcia in 2004. Acquitted but debilitated, he later sought to clear his conscience as well by exposing the superiors who made him tinker with multibillion-peso military funds. Three other colonels, two of them active duty, nervously joined him in digging up crates of records. Now they all risk retribution — and being charged based on their very admitted roles in others’ plundering.

The exoneration was odd. Rabusa and fellow-crusaders had traced the money trail through disbursement vouchers and bank accounts. One of the accused generals confessed to knowingly accepting dirty money and issuing fake or unauthorized receipts. If the evidence still was insufficient to establish probable cause, it was perhaps because the Ombudsman did not do its own job of building a case from Rabusa’s contributions. Indeed after Rabusa filed the case before the justice department in 2011, no state investigator or prosecutor ever contacted him. Perhaps the Sandiganbayan was right portraying them as dumb.

The Ombudsman decided to exonerate in July 2012. Yet it released the ruling nine months later last week. Rabusa was given a mere five days to move for reconsideration, if he still has the energy and money.

Rabusa has been using personal and volunteered funds and labor to pursue the plunder raps. But the Supreme Court’s unfreezing of Ligot’s stolen P54 million has the effect of returning it to him. Ligot can use that money to defeat Rabusa in court and elsewhere.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]