PIMENTEL SEEKS INQUIRY INTO CHANGE OF HEAD
OF NATIONAL PRINTING OFFICE

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today called for a Senate inquiry into the circumstances behind the ouster of Enrique Agana as chief of the National Printing Office (NPO) and his replacement by retired Admiral Tirso Danga.

Danga, Pimentel noted that he was the head of Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) during the 2004 elections when operatives of the spy agency supposedly conducted wiretapping operations that produced the taped conversations between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and then Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. In those conversations, the two supposedly discussed "special operations" on the rigging of election results in favor of Mrs. Arroyo to make it appear he won over opposition contender Fernando Poe, Jr.

Pimentel said that placing Danga as the director of NPO is like appointing a forger Governor of the Central Bank.

He said the choice of Danga as chief of the NPO, which prints official ballots and other election forms, is highly objectionable because of his alleged role in the cover-up of the massive fraud that marred the 2004 presidential elections during his stint as chief of the ISAFP.

Agana was accused of raping the girl by Napoleon Bunagan, Jr. of Valenzuela City who identified himself as a concerned citizen. However, the mother of the girl, identified in newspaper reports as Carmen, denied that there was a rape.

Carmen said the accusation against Agana was concocted by Bunagan, Francisco Datu and a woman named Yanni.

Agana said Bunagan, owner of a printing plant, and his accomplices tried to blackmail him after he disapproved a printing contract that would have earned them P33 million.

Without conducting an inquiry into the alleged rape, Malacañang decided to replace Agana with Danga.

Pimentel said if there is truth behind Agana's claim that the Palace did not give him an opportunity to present his side and clear his name, that speaks ill of the sense of fairness and justice on the part of the Arroyo administration.

"The swiftness with which the Palace removed Agana from his post and installed Rear Admiral Danga as his replacement clearly show an administration effort to put the National Printing Office under the control of a man whom it can trust despite his sullied reputation. But this only raises suspicion that this is part of a sinister agenda to manipulate the 2010 elections to keep administration forces in power," he said.

Pimentel stressed that the NPO should be headed by a person of proven integrity, nonpartisanship and competence to prevent a repetition of irregularities in the 2004 presidential elections involving the NPO such as the alleged overprinting of ballots, election returns and other official election forms. Moreover Danga, he said, was implicated in the cover-up of the murder of Navy Ensign Philip Pestaño in 1995.

These printing irregularities were widely reported in the media and were elaborated in the Senate's investigation of the "Hello Garci" scandal, the minority leader said.