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.