By Dona Pazzibugan
Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines–Former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol will soon be charged with electoral sabotage for losing the municipal election results in the province during the May senatorial elections.
Resurreccion Borra, who took over as acting Commission on Elections chairman following Benjamin Abalos Sr.’s resignation, told a Senate budget hearing last week that the poll body would pursue filing criminal charges against Bedol.
Borra and Commissioners Nicodemo Ferrer, Florentino Tuason and Romeo Brawner appeared before Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, chairman of the Senate finance committee and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, to appeal for no further cuts to the Comelec’s proposed P4.3 billion-budget for next year.
Comelec had originally asked for an P8.6 billion-budget for 2008, but Malacañang cut this in half to P4.3 billion as the final proposal to be submitted to Congress.
This includes the proposed P267-million budget for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) election in 2008.
Borra mentioned Bedol’s case when questioned what the Comelec has done against erring election officers.
“He has a pending case on electoral sabotage. The investigation is ongoing for criminal prosecution,” said Borra, adding that the result of the preliminary investigation would be released “soon.”
The Comelec under Abalos had come under fire from poll watchdog groups for the poll body’s kid glove treatment of Bedol, who failed to produce the municipal certificates of canvass of the senatorial elections from Maguindanao to the Comelec office in Manila.
Bedol was eventually cited for indirect contempt for snubbing Comelec hearings and was sentenced to six months in jail and fined P1,000. But he spent only one night at the Comelec’s law department before he was released on a P15,000 bail.
Opposition senatorial candidate Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III filed an electoral protest before the Senate Electoral Tribunal against administration candidate Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, mainly contesting the inclusion of the Maguindanao votes.
The Comelec observed that Maguindanao produced “statistically improbable” results since 19 out of 37 senatorial candidates got zero votes while the administration Team Unity slate registered a landslide victory.
After the recanvassing of the results from Maguindanao and a handful of other municipalities in the ARMM, Zubiri dislodged Pimentel from the 12th slot.
In an interview after the hearing, Borra said the preliminary investigation report recommending the filing of electoral sabotage charges against Bedol would be out soon.
He said the Comelec’s law department would submit the report to Ferrer, who was put in charge of the Maguindanao recanvassing (after Commissioner Rene Sarmiento begged off for health reasons).
Borra said Ferrer would draft the ruling for the filing of an electoral sabotage case against Bedol for “electoral offenses, fraud, anomalies and infidelity in the custody of election documents.”
Borra refused to comment on how the finding on Bedol’s culpability would affect Pimentel’s electoral protest.
