A BIG WINNING MARGIN
Like any candidate, Arroyo wanted to win. That much was clear to all the president’s men and women. Actually, says an ex-Cabinet member, “she was obsessed with the idea of winning. She (couldn’t) stand a loss….(She) felt she had to redeem her father (the late president Diosdado Macapagal) who lost in his reelection (bid).”

	RIGGING THE COUNT. “Special operations” in Mindanao supposedly widened Arroyo’s lead.

That the president should win by at least a million votes, however, was never made known to most members of her Cabinet. Yet it apparently was common knowledge among the other groups working for her.

A handler of a K-4 senatorial candidate says that two weeks before the May 10, 2004 elections, a campaign operative had said the president would win by 800,000 votes. “Plantsado na raw (It was already arranged),” the handler says. That statement would make sense to the handler only after the “Hello, Garci” tapes controversy broke out.

More interestingly, however, is that other campaign insiders say First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, Kampi stalwart Ronaldo ‘Ronnie’ Puno, and a top government official met regularly at the Wack Wack Country Club before the campaign to discuss ways to ensure not only the president’s victory, but also a huge winning margin.

As campaign manager, presidential political adviser Gabriel Claudio was the K-4’s public face in last year’s elections. But those with the administration party say it was Mike Arroyo who was the de facto campaign manager, and that he got a lot of help from Puno.

At the peak of the political crisis, the president herself told some Cabinet members that she had called in the Antipolo congressman to help. But during the campaign, he had no official role in the Arroyo camp. “He was never mentioned, he was never seen,” says Deles. “I would even deny his involvement in the president’s campaign. Even the First Gentleman was not visible.”

Some Palace insiders, however, say Puno was working quietly behind the scenes with the First Gentleman and had recommended “unorthodox” means to clinch Arroyo’s huge winning margin over her opponent, actor Fernando Poe Jr.

A campaign strategist who was part of the K-4 coalition also recalls a K-4 lawyer assuring them that they were certain to get help. “The same operations as Sulo Hotel and Byron Hotel,” the strategist was told, apparently in reference to Puno’s operations at Sulo Hotel in Quezon City when he helped Ramos’s 1992 presidential campaign and at Byron Hotel in Mandaluyong when he backed Joseph Estrada’s presidential bid.

The strategist says, “DILG (the Department of Interior and Local Governments that Puno headed under the Estrada presidency) people in the provinces were used as listening posts. They even knew who drug and jueteng money were funding.”

Both Claudio and Puno were with the Ramos campaign. In a 2003 interview with PCIJ, Puno scoffed at allegations that he was the architect of Ramos’s supposed dirty-tricks department based at Sulo Hotel. He said he delivers because he has the science, citing his experience a campaign consultant for the U.S. lobbying fi rm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, which has strong links to the Republican Party.

In 2002, Puno supposedly set up camp again at Byron Hotel to build a comprehensive elections database for Arroyo. A K-4 campaign strategist says Puno disbanded the group when President Arroyo announced on Rizal Day in 2002 she was not running.

But he quickly got the group back together in April 2003, long before the president announced her candidacy. The strategy, this source says, was to use the database to pinpoint places where Arroyo was strong and employ “all means” to increase her votes.

Malaya columnist and opposition stalwart Lito Banayo, quoting Loren Legarda’s electoral recount consultants, says Byron Hotel was the “headquarters of choice in the 2004 electoral experience of a coven of prefabricators of election returns” used to ensure the president’s landslide victory in Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol.

One member of the K-4 campaign says Puno oversaw the Mindanao canvassing after being proclaimed Antipolo City’s congressman. This source asserts that “Ronnie Puno played a big role,” although he was “distracted because he was running at the same time.”

“CONSULTATIONS” WITH CASH
Apparently more focused on their “tasks” were Garcillano and his cohorts. Indeed, Garcillano already seemed to know what he would be doing when he applied for the post of Comelec commissioner. In his Nov. 11, 2003 letter to the president, Garcillano reminded Arroyo that he was among those approached by her husband when she ran and topped the 1995 senatorial polls.

He also underlined his role in monitoring and protecting the votes of the Lakas senatorial candidates in 2001. Garcillano was formerly the Region 10 (Northern Mindanao) Comelec director. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel called him a “dagdag bawas” (vote-padding and shaving) operator, but he was named elections commissioner anyway in February 2004.

The burly Zuce says he was instrumental in bringing Garcillano to Rufino’s — and consequently the president’s — attention. In his sworn statement, Zuce says Garcillano, with Rufino’s blessings, in 2002 organized three “consultation meetings” with Mindanao-based Comelec officials in Lanao del Norte and General Santos City during which he solicited their support for the president’s candidacy and gave out cash ranging from P5,000 to P20,000.

A year later, says Zuce, Mindanao regional directors and provincial election supervisors met at the Grand Boulevard Hotel on Roxas Boulevard to discuss the president’s candidacy. Envelopes containing P17,000 each were distributed to the participants.

On Jan. 10, 2004, Garcillano, through Rufino’s office, organized yet another meeting with 23 Mindanao election officials, again at the Grand Boulevard.

This time, each Comelec official got P25,000, Zuce says. But Zuce’s most damning allegation so far is that President Arroyo hosted dinner for 27 Mindanao-based Comelec officials at her La Vista residence in Quezon City four months before the elections, and that envelopes containing P30,000 each were distributed by Lilia ‘Baby’ Pineda, wife of jueteng lord Rodolfo ‘Bong’ Pineda, to her guests in her presence. Zuce, who was invited to the dinner and got an envelope himself, says Garcillano and former Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy were also present. Zuce told the PCIJ as well as the Senate later that the president hosted another dinner that same month for about 20 Comelec officials from Luzon and the Visayas.

Baby Pineda again distributed money to the officials before they left Arroyo’s home. Malacañang has issued no categorical denial about the dinners, although the president herself has said, “Ang masasabi ko walang nagbibigay ng suhol sa harap ko (All I can say is no one gives out bribes in front of me).”

The now ailing Rufino’s own statement said, “I and my office have never been involved in influencing, much less bribing, Comelec officials to support Lakas-NUCD candidates including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.” Comelec officials led by Region 4 Director Juanito ‘Johnny’ Icaro, who allegedly distributed the envelopes at La Vista, have likewise rebutted Zuce’s charges.

But Comelec regional director Helen A. Flores, who was not in any of the meetings Zuce said took place from 2002 to 2004, says Garcillano, through his security officer and nephew Capt. Valentino Lopez, had offered her P50 million to rig the 2004 polls. Flores says she spurned the offer. Four days before election day, she was relieved as regional director for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and moved to Region 9 (Western Mindanao). Lopez, now with the Army Headquarters Support Group, denies involvement in the bribery attempt.