Another Comelec mystery that Brillantes is ignoring

Former Comelec insider Melchor Magdamo told an amazing story last Tuesday. Quoting sources and showing photos, he reported a rushed hush-hush printing of boxes upon boxes of apparently extra ballots of the May 2013 election. It supposedly happened two weeks earlier, at the Holy Family Printing shop on Congressional Avenue, Quezon City. During the days-long operation, big shots in flashy cars came and went to the printing house in the dead of night. Who were they? And why would anyone print countless extras of those ridiculously oversized cardboard ballots – two months after Election Day? That’s the mystery Magdamo is trying to unravel.

To recall, Magdamo is the lawyer who blew the whistle on the P690-million ballot-secrecy folder scam of Election 2010. On appointment as Comelec head two years before, retired justice Jose Melo had brought him in as legal assistant and “eyes and ears.” Magdamo uncovered many rackets at the poll agency, reporting all to Melo for disciplinary action. Oddly, though, when he and two other key Comelec managers opposed the contracting of the shifty Venezuelan Smartmatic Corp. for the poll automation, Melo began to ignore their counsel. Then Magdamo stumbled upon Melo’s approval of a deal with one of the Comelec’s nine Mafia-like favored suppliers. It called for 1.8 million folders, priced P380 apiece, but which can be bought in bookstores for P12. Magdamo resigned, then ran to the press with his story. Six old-time officers, recidivists all, were suspended for the scam. Magdamo went on to expose more, including multimillion-peso overpriced contracts for ballot bundling and wrapping in Elections 2010 and 2013.

Back to Magdamo’s latest revelation. Supposedly the extra printed ballots are not for the forthcoming barangay election in October. From snapshots, they are long, containing many candidates’ names for local and congressional positions. Barangay ballots are shorter. Printing was done at a private shop. Meaning, it is unofficial. Only the National Printing Office is authorized to produce such security materials. The NPO had subcontracted Holy Family for ballot printing in Election 2013. Having overseen such work in the past, Magdamo said subcontractors are compelled to bring their machines to the NPO premises.

Due to its timing, Magdamo said, the secret printing of extra ballots could be linked to the Comelec’s unexplained constant changing “official counts” (see Gotcha, 15 and 19 July 2013). In mid-July its website suddenly posted final senatorial winners’ counts of 16 million to 12.8 million votes. The figures were four million to 2.6 million lower than its earlier posting of the 12 proclaimed winners. The Comelec also lowered the turnout to 31,568,679 voters, more than eight million fewer than the previous “officially canvass” of 39,898,992.

Magdamo conjectured that someone is attempting to cover up the exposed tomfoolery of the Comelec’s varying “final results.” If so, the extra ballots must run up to eight million pieces. That would cost a lot.

Present Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes would do well to investigate this exposé by a tried-and-tested whistleblower. For, if the printing turns out to be true and unauthorized, it could border on poll sabotage, a heinous no-bail offense.

Last week Brillantes smelled a rat in too many adults turning out to register as first-time voters for this October’s barangay polls. Likely politicos had bused in tens of thousands who crowded out the adolescents listing up for their own Youth Council balloting. Those adult registrants are potential flying voters, so Brillantes quickly ordered the Comelec staff to scrutinize their papers.

Brillantes should act quickly too on this potentially bigger poll offense of ballot overprinting. To ignore it is tantamount to aiding and abetting.

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Journalists are finding cause to bind closer than ever – against crimes against them.

Three more of them were slain last week. Columnists Richard Kho and Bonifacio Loreto Jr., of the defunct Aksion Ngayon journal, were gunned down in front of the latter’s home in Quezon City. Photojournalist Mario Sy was shot dead inside his house in General Santos City.

“In quick succession, the three became the 16th, 17th and 18th media practitioners murdered under Aquino’s watch, and the 156th, 157th and 158th since our supposed return to democracy in 1986,” the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines lamented.

Also since the other week, ABS-CBN senior reporter Ces Drilon has been receiving death threats on her mobile. The threats began right after she reported on television news about a lawyer of the Ampatuan massacre indictees being investigated for tax fraud. The Ampatuans are in jail while on trial for the 2009 massacre of 58 political rivals and journalists.

Police and court records show that, on surface, the killers wanted to shut up the journalists from exposing more of their shenanigans. On deeper study, most were blinded by false pride, blaming the journalists, not their own wrongdoings, for shaming their families. And yet, murder worsens their initial offenses - and brings greater shame to the family.

That is what’s happening to the masterminds of the 2005 killing of Marlene Esperat, exposer of the P780-million fertilizer scam. Some of them have avoided initial investigations and indictments. But the crime keeps haunting them in the form of newer cases, blotting their family name for generations to come.

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