STIGMA AS POLL OPERATOR WILL HOUND CANDIDATE GARCI -- PIMENTEL

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY -- Senate Minority Leader Aquilino
"Nene" Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said he must
admit that former Elections Commissioner Virgilio
Garcillano has not run out of gall by pursuing his bid
for a congressional seat despite the ignominy that he
brought upon himself by allegedly masterminding the
massive rigging of the results in the 2004
Presidential Elections in favor of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo.

Commenting on reports that Garcillano has filed his
certificate of candidacy for congressman in the 2nd
district of Bukidnon, Pimentel said the Filipino
people are intelligent enough to discern who among the
candidates deserve to get elected to public office as
distinguished from those who have selfish or dubious
motives.

Pimentel said it is lamentable that a personality like
Garcillano should be aspiring for public office
instead of being subjected to punishment for his
despicable role in "dagdag-dagdag bawas" (vote-padding
and shaving) operations in the 2004 polls, as
evidenced by the "Hello Garci tapes."

If Garcillano has gone scot-free despite the gravity
of his crime against the Filipino people, Pimentel
said, it is because of the support extended to him by
President Arroyo.

"Garcillano is a creature of GMA. And GMA is also a
creature of Garcillano. That is why hypocrisy runs in
their veins. It's in their DNA. And they can't get
away with it," he said.

Meanwhile, Pimentel challenged provincial and city
prosecutors and other lawyers who will sit in the
boards of canvassers in the May elections to take the
lead in preventing cheating and in protecting the
sanctity of the ballot.

He warned that if the prosecutors and other members of
the boards of canvassers do not discharge their duties
faithfully, they would not only condemn themselves but
also the people to suffer from the ill-effects of
misgovernment and misrule for years on end.

"But if they do their work according to the law, then
after the elections, we, as a people, can breathe easy
and claim proudly before the world that we are not
born to criminality or to be election cheats,"
Pimentel told delegates to the 11th National
Convention of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines in
this Northern Mindanao city.

Speaking from his own experience as a prime victim of
dagdag-bawas operations in the 1995 senatorial
election, Pimentel said it is at the level of the
boards of canvassers that large-scale electoral fraud
is carried out by falsifying the election returns and
certificates of canvass.

"As lawyers, let us help keep the elections clean. If
the elections are dishonest, we put bad people in
government. And bad government would be a disaster
waiting to explode in a societal upheaval from which
nobody would emerge victorious," he said.
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