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THE PRESIDENT
The Unmaking of the President
by Sheila S. Coronel
Mrs. Arroyo is reaping the consequences of the damage she has wrought on key institutions.

The Tangled Tale of the Tapes
There appears to be more comedy than cunning in the release of the "Garci" tapes.

Bye, Bye Love
Gloria and Mike complement, but also compete with, each other.

THE OPPOSITION
Despite Susan, The Opposition is not Quite Smelling Like Roses
by Luz Rimban
Mrs. Poe is the best thing that has ever happened to a splintered and discredited opposition.

Pondering Plans B to G
A whole range of options is being offered as a way out of the current mess.

THE ELECTION
Who Really Won in 2004?
by Yvonne T. Chua
The experts say the fight was so close it was a statistical dead heat.

WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE COMELEC?
The Comelec's Fall from Grace
by Alecks P. Pabico
The questionable credentials and integrity of commissioners have wrecked the election body.

Sins of the Commission
Scandals have hounded the Comelec for years.

VIRGILIO GARCILLANO
Master Operator
by Sheila S. Coronel
The man whose voice is heard on The Tapes is an expert in election fraud.

MINDANAO
Working 'Miracles' in Mindanao
by Yvonne T. Chua
The "Garci" recording gives clues on how the cheating was done in the South.

Statistically Improbable
The result of the elections in some Mindanao towns challenges credulity.

PARTY LIST
Messing with the Party List
by Luz Rimban
Favored party-list groups got more than a little help from the Comelec fraud squad.

THE FIRST FAMILY
Shame and Scandal in the Family
The Arroyos have weathered allegations that range from keeping secret bank accounts to getting money from illegal gambling.

TECHNOLOGY
Blogging Gloria
by Alecks P. Pabico
Ringtones, bootlegged CDs, and blogs are the new weapons of resistance.

POINTS OF VIEW
Writings on the (Democracy) Wall
Filipinos have never been shy about speaking out, especially in turbulent times.

HELLO, GARCI?
The Non(Musical): A Program Guide
There really is only one Garci recording, but several versions of it have been released. A full transcript and a list of the cast of characters in The Tapes is in this issue.

The man whose voice is heard on The Tapes is an expert in election fraud.

by SHEILA S. CORONEL

	FRAUD EXPERT. Virgilio Garcillano used his skills and experiece to manipulate the 2004 count.

VIRGILIO Garcillano will go down in history as the election official whose wiretapped conversations mortally wounded a president. He disappeared from public view in the second week of June, as the controversy over the wiretaps heated up, and many may have a hard time recalling what he looks like. Yet his raspy voice, distinctive lisp, and thick Visayan accent are now embedded in the audio memory of millions of Filipinos who have listened to the "Garci" tapes.

It is unlikely Garcillano would ever live this down or that he would be able to return again to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Already, the damage his recorded phone calls have caused, not only to the Comelec but also to the presidency, is so severe and so devastating, both these institutions have to undergo massive cleansing if they are to recover their credibility and respectability.

Philippine elections are complex. The manual voting, counting, and canvassing are governed by arcane rules. There are for example, 28 rules just on the appreciation of ballots. And that's just one small section of the Omnibus Election Code, a huge ton)e guaranteed to give the reader migraine. The section on prohibited offenses alone is mind-boggling.

The law, therefore, abounds with procedural minefields awaiting those who are ignorant of it. But Garcillano honed his skills and his knowledge of election laws and procedures through his long years in the poll body. He also developed an extensive network of contacts, especially in Mindanao, where he was assigned.

Garcillano's life was the Comelec, the very office that he helped destroy. He joined the agency as a lawyer in 1961, when he was only in his mid-20s. Except for a six-year gap from 1986 to 1993, when he was purged by the leadership of the post-Marcos commission, he served at the Comelec continuously until he dropped out of sight last month.

He had risen up the ranks, eventually retiring as director for Region 10 (Northern Mindanao) in 2002. Thanks to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, he was appointed commissioner on February 11, 2004, just as the presidential campaign was kicking off.

A TECHNOCRAT OF FRAUD
Garcillano was an election technocrat, a career bureaucrat with specialized skills in a specific sphere of government. These skills are invaluable for the efficient administration of elections. But they can also be used for more sinister purposes. As the "Garci" tapes revealed and as those who know him well say, the commissioner was a master fraud operator who used his knowledge of election laws and procedures, his long field experience, and his extensive network of contacts to rig the vote in favor of President Arroyo, Senator Robert Barbers, and a few other local politicians.

"He was the plotter for electoral fraud, the overall supervisor and commander in chief," says a Comelec official who asked not to be named. "He was working for GMA."

"He set up the infrastructure for cheating," says Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, who has heard the "Garci" recording and who led the opposition protest against alleged vote rigging in the 2004 elections. "He was the operator for Gloria. He knew how the cheating was done in Mindanao and he manipulated the vote so GMA's lead would not be less than one million."

In an interview with journalists on June 7, just days before his mysterious disappearance, Garcillano denied all these allegations and insisted it was not his voice on the tape. But several Comelec officials interviewed by the PCIJ as well as former Comelec chair Christian Monsod confirm it is indeed Garcillano's voice that is in the recording. Moreover, Garcillano identified himself in several of the wiretapped conversations and also spoke to various individuals — his wife Grace, his secretary Ellen Peralta, and his maid Lyn — whose connection to him cannot be denied.

Still, while Garcillano is almost surely the one on the tape, he was probably not the overall fraud strategist. That role probably belonged to other aides of the president. His specialty was postelection fraud in Mindanao. As reported elsewhere and as alleged by the opposition, the rigging of the 2004 vote took place in many parts of the country, and was particularly intense in Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol. Mindanao may have been typecast as the arena for fraud, but the reality is that candidates cheat where they are strongest and where the manipulation would be less obvious.

Mindanao, however, was Garcillano's particular area of expertise, and he was probably appointed for this reason. It also happened that Mindanao was the arena of contention between the administration and the opposition. While the surveys had indicated that Luzon would likely go for Fernando Poe Jr., and the Visayas, for Arroyo, Mindanao was up for grabs. Its votes were likely to deliver the winning margin, and it was apparently Garcillano's role to make sure that margin went to the President.

The wiretapped recordings, which start on May 17, 2004, a week after elections, and end on June 18, give little indication of Garcillano's role during the election campaign and the actual voting. It is, however, a treasure trove for uncovering the postelection manipulation of the results. It is apparent from the conversations that Garcillano was the orchestrator, the conductor of a symphony of fraud, at least for Mindanao. He was the one coordinating the workings of elections officials on the ground, Comelec officials in Manila, and the military and the police, which are "deputized" or placed under the authority of the Comelec for the duration of the elections.

In other words, the very individuals and institutions that were supposed to guard the ballot were actually the very same ones manipulating the count. Garcillano was thus not the sole culprit: he was at the hub of a network of fraud that included scores, if not hundreds, of other government officials and employees.

THE MOST POWERFUL COMMISSIONER
But Garcillano was one of the most crucial parts of that network. His rise to become, in the words of one Comelec insider, "the most powerful commissioner in Comelec" — eclipsing even Chairman Benjamin Abalos — was largely due to his election expertise and experience. At 68, and with 40 years of election experience behind him, Garcillano had a far more comprehensive knowledge of election procedures than his other colleagues in the agency. The other commissioners deferred to him because of this, as well as his seniority and his perceived closeness to Malacañang. In addition, he was an assertive figure who knew how to exercise power while getting along superbly with the others. It was then no surprise that he eventually overshadowed Abalos, a lackadaisical and lackluster Comelec chief who was not very familiar with election laws.

"He really knew the law and the process," Monsod said, referring to Garcillano, in a recent television interview, "and he was very good at interpersonal relations."

For sure, the commissioner was popular among Comelec employees. As election boss in Northern Mindanao, he was famous for treating his staff to overseas trips and for organizing athletic competitions with big prizes solicited from politicians. He was popular at the main office in Intramuros as well. Garcillano liked to drink and to socialize with the Comelec staff, and managed to cement friendships with many of them during those drinking sessions. (In one of the recorded conversations, his wife reprimands him for drinking with his colleagues even in the afternoon.) He was such an amiable boss and colleague that some of the elections personnel whose conversations with Garcillano were recorded in the wiretaps referred to him as "Tatay" or "'Tay" (dad). With his thinning hair and soft facial features, he even looked the part of a doting father.

"He was very friendly," says a Comelec official, "and he loves to lead a group, he takes the initiative."

By being Mr. Congeniality, Garcillano was able to pinpoint compliant elections officials and persuade them, through gifts and other inducements, to do his bidding. Indeed, even prior to his appointment as Comelec commissioner, Garcillano had already earned a reputation for being a master of dagdag-bawas or vote padding and shaving operations. These entail tampering with the results of the municipal or provincial canvass. This is wholesale fraud, and is consequently more efficient than the retail doctoring of the count at the precinct level.

Sen. Pimentel, for one, says that even during the Marcos era, Garcillano was already "a known partisan operator of whoever was in power at that time." Pimentel has accused Garcillano not only of involvement in dagdag-bawas operations but also of distributing money in previous elections to Comelec officials from the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

All these qualities made Garcillano perfect for the role he was to play in the 2004 elections. Although he became a commissioner only three months before the polls, he was soon taking on a lot of tasks, including vetting appointments, even of utility personnel, say Comelec insiders. Before long, he had a say in who was going to be named to man election posts in sensitive areas. It eventually came to the point that all memos issued by Abalos passed through Garcillano. By election time, he was acting as the Comelec's de facto chair, says an elections official. He was therefore in a position to orchestrate large-scale, institutional fraud.