Press Release
June 19, 2008

REMOVAL OF SUMALIPAO AS COMELEC REG'L DIRECTOR IN ARMM HAILED

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today commended Commission on Elections Chairman Jose Melo for relieving Regional Director Reynaldo Sumalipao of his duties in supervising the August 11 election in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Pimentel said Melo made a correct and timely decision in view of the stigma that hangs over the head of Sumalipao arising from his alleged involvement in the massive fraud that marred the May 2004 Presidential Election and the May 2007 Senatorial Election in the autonomous region.

Sumalipao was widely known to be a protege of former Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano with whom he allegedly conspired in rigging the results of the presidential election to favor President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Lanao del Sur where he was assigned in 2004.

As regional elections supervisor in the ARMM, he was also blamed for failing to prevent the widespread tampering of election documents in the last senatorial election in Maguindanao and other provinces in the region. In that election, the votes for administration candidates were padded to the extent that they obtained an incredible 70 to 90 percent of the votes while many opposition bets were credited with statistically impossible zero votes in some towns in Maguindanao.

"Congratulations to Chairman Melo for relieving Sumalipao of Comelec duties in the ARMM elections," Pimentel said. "But officials involved in the election fraud in 2004 and 2007 in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi Tawi should also be removed."

The senator from Mindanao expressed the hope that the relief of Sumalipao signals the start of a no-nonsense move to weed out the Comelec of cheaters and scalawags, pursue much-needed electoral reforms and restore the credibility and public trust in the electoral process.

Pimentel said the ax should also fall on other Comelec field officials in the ARMM provinces who were linked to irregularities in the past two national elections.

He said the involvement of several Comelec officials in the irregularities in the 2004 and 2007 polls is well documented in the reports prepared by the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and other poll watch groups that were submitted to the Comelec, Congress, the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (Supreme Court) and the Senate Electoral Tribunal.

However, the alleged mastermind in the Maguindanao poll fraud, former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol went into hiding while his case was under investigation after the election. Law enforcers have failed to track down and arrest Bedol.

Pimentel bewailed the fact that the previous Comelec leadership had ignored petitions and calls by concerned citizens and organizations for investigation, removal and prosecution of these notoriously undesirable election officials. Worse, he said almost all of them were promoted to higher positions as if it were a state policy to reward election mischief that was carried out in the name of the political survival of President Arroyo and her administration.

He said the purge of discredited Comelec officials will complement the efforts to computerize the August 11 elections in the ARMM to eliminate malpractices in the region which has earned the unsavory tag "cheating capital of the Philippines."

News Latest News Feed