GUDANI'S SUMMONS
On May 12, 2001, Gudani was summoned to Manila by higher headquarters. He left Marawi the same day, reported to both Navy Flag Qfficer-in-Command Adm. Ernesto de Leon and the Marine Commandant Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio, and was told to take a break—"play golf, go to Boracay."

	COMMANDER IN CHIEF. President Arroyo won by a landslide in Lanao del Sur, but questions about the integrity of the voting there has tainted her victory. [photo courtesy of Malaya]

Gudani, in his Senate testimony, said this was to him an "incomprehensible and illogical order" since his presence in Lanao was crucial. The canvassing was then taking place in several buildings in and around the provincial capitol in Marawi. Gudani had two battalions— about 200 men—to secure the counting, and he was worried that these were not enough.

What Gudani did not know was that on the same day that he left Marawi, Zuce drove into town, Capt. Marion Mendoza, who was detailed to the Comelec as Garcillano's security but was assigned to secure the commissioner's nephew instead, was with Zuce on May 12. In an affidavit he submitted to the Senate last August, Mendoza said that on that day, he saw Zuce approach Sumalipao in tine of the canvassing centers "and I personally saw a large amount of cash in an envelope being given to the said Comelec director."

Mendoza alleged that he and Zuce returned to the canvass center the next day, May 13, and this was when he heard Zuce telling Sumalipao "that he is doing something for the success of GMA in the election."

But Sumalipao angrily denies having seen Zuce during the canvass. "I know Zuce," he says. "I met him at Garcillano's office and he was introduced as the commissioner's nephew, but I never saw him in Marawi or Lanao during the canvassing." The security at the canvass cent­er, he says, was very strict and it would not have been possible for Zuce and other unauthorized people to get in.

Meanwhile, on May 12, Col. Gomiendo Pirino, an Army officer previously assigned to the Southcom headquarters in Zamboanga City, took over Gudani's command. This was resented by the Marines because Pirino was a colonel assuming a general's post, and he wasn't even a Marine.

Balutan, a decorated combat officer, bristled. "My brigade commander was relieved...for no apparent reason," he told the Senate, "maybe for doing his job well, for being apolitical." In contrast, he said. Pirino told him to "support the administration." When asked by the senators what this meant, Balutan replied that he understood it to mean that he should "slacken security."

The Marines were strict, said Balutan, preventing the entry into the canvass centers of those who were not authorized to be there. They also held their ground. In his testimony before the AFP Fact-Finding Board set up to investigate the alleged involvement of the military in election fraud, Balutan recounted how his fellow Marines defied orders to cheat.

Sources in the Board say that Balutan, in his testimony, recounted the attempt to co-opt members of the II'1' Marine battalion into the conspiracy of fraud. About half of the battalion. then stationed at the Southcom headquarters in Zamboanga City, was sent to Marawi a week before the elections to help administer the voting. There, they underwent training by the Comelec, so they could act as election inspectors as there were not enough teachers to man all the precincts in Lanao.

Instead, said Balutan, the whole battalion was being instructed to cheat. Pirino and another Army officer, he said, instructed the battalion commander, Col. Remigio Valdez, how to rig the count. Valdez, who is now in schooling in the United States, resisted. Balutan said, but it was possible that he was bypassed.

Since 2005, Pirino has been the commander of the Armed Forces Reserve Command headquartered in Pagadian. Contacted by telephone, he refused to answer questions. "I will only talk at the proper forum and proper time," he said. "Any unnecessary comment I'll make will only sensationalize the issue."

With Pirino in command in Camp Keithley, there was a noticeable decline in the security of the canvass centers, says Lanao del Sur Namfrel chair Abdullah Palidig. 'The Namfrel people were no longer allowed in, because of Comelec's order," he remembers. "Most of the watchers were also unable to gel in, and even if they got in, 'di na nakasalita (they were not allowed to talk)."

Dalidig says Pirino, who is also Maranao, is his distant relative. Sometime during the canvassing, when the Namfrel chair threatened to complain and to expose what he knew, the colonel visited him at his office. Recounts Dalidig; "He told me, Huwag mo ituloy ang pagbubulgar. Tulungan mo 'ko (don't speak out anymore, just help me) because GMA is going to promote me to general.' He said he was asked to watch me because according to Garci, Namfrel of Lanao is a problem."

THE "TAPAL-TAPAL" OPERATIONS
As the security slackened, the operators were able to do their work. Zuce said one of his tasks was to check on the count. Long before the elections, he said, his uncle had already laid the groundwork. As early as 2002, Garcillano had already been meeting with key Comelec personnel in Mindanao to ensure they would do everything to make the president win. In those meetings, which Zuce helped organize, envelopes of cash were given out to the Comelec bureaucrats in attendance, he said.

Zuce's role in the counting phase of the election was to check on whether the Comelec people were doing what they had agreed to do. He estimated that Garcillano's group was given a budget of P9 million to P12 million for this phase of their operations, although they had asked for more than P30 million. The money, Zuce learned from his uncle, came from Pampanga jueteng lord Rodolfo 'Bong' Pineda. Some of it already reached the Comelec people days before the voting, he said, but more payoffs were made during the count. President Arroyo. who Zuce said hosted meetings for Mindanao-based Comelec personnel in her Quezon City home prior to the 2004 election campaign, has scoffed at the latter's allegations, saying that it was "black propaganda" concocted by "those who are in need of money and whose testimonies are for sale."

But Zuce, who is in hiding, insists on the veracity of his story. He says that during the counting, he went around the different canvass centers to check how the president was doing. He would then report to his uncle on the progress ot the count. If Arroyo was lagging in a provincial canvass, he would ask the Comelec officials there. "Bakit ganu'n ang nangyari, akala ko kontrol natin...baka puwedeng gawan natin na paraan na magtapal tayo, madagdagan natin nang ganito kalaki (How did that happen? I thought we had everything under control...Maybe we can do something to remedy the situation, we can add this much more votes)."

He said he left it to the Comelec people to decide how they would rig the count. "Sila na nakakaalam no'n, kung anong diskarte doon sa provincial canvassing (They're the ones who know what do. they had to make the calculations and work these out in the provincial canvassing)," But. he added, when Poe's lead was too big. as in Misamis Oriental, the operators there risked discovery if they padded and shaved the votes too much. To compensate for the Misamis Oriental upset, he said, they had to pad even more the Arroyo votes in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao. Comelec figures show that it was in these two provinces that the president posted her biggest w inning margins in the whole of Mindanao.

Zuce's story is partly corroborated by the testimony of Capt. Mendoza, who said he accompanied the commissioner's nephew to various canvass centers in Lanao and Cotabato from May 12 to 18. There, he said, he saw Zuce speaking with provincial Comelec officials, following up election results with them, and giving them cash.

Partial corroboration is also provided by the phone call the president made to Garcillano on May 29, where she is heard asking the commissioner if she would still gel a one-million-vote lead. The commissioner said so far her lead was 980,000 "pero mag-compensate pa sa Lanao 'yan (but we will compensate in Lanao)." as he was still expecting the poll results from seven more towns in Lanao del Sur.

When he said that, Garcillano was either being prescient or he had already worked things out on the ground. By the time that phone call was made, the initial results of the Lanao del Sur canvass had already been sent to Manila four days before. But in seven Lanao towns, the counting had been delayed, either because special elections needed to be called or allegedly because the canvassers were deliberately prolonging the count because of "special operations." The results of the special elections, which were held on May 22 and June 5, were particularly suspicious. In Madalum, for example, Arroyo led Poe by 30 votes to one. The winning ratios in the special elections were far more scandalous than those in the earlier Lanao results: 4.5 votes for Arroyo for every one of FPJ's, even as the overall provincial ratio was only three votes to one. In all, the president got 30,447 votes in the special elections — enough to get her the one-million-vote lead. Poe, on the other hand got only 6,805.

But Sumalipao, the Lanao del Sur election officer, is adamant. There was no way cheating could have taken place there, he says. "There were 50 lawyers there during the canvassing, 20 from the opposition," he says. "They were watching every time I opened a COC. How can I add or subtract votes? I am willing to be killed if they find even just one vote added to GMA or one vote taken from FPJ."

Namfrel's Dalidig. who has been watching Lanao elections since 1992, is equally firm. He says that 2004 was the worst case of dagdag-bawas he has ever seen. The opposition could not prevent it, he says, because they didn't have enough people to guard the count. "This is the worst, the dirtiest election."