This is my article in the 23 November 2011 edition of the Business Mirror.
LAST Friday the Commission on Elections (Comelec) filed a case for electoral sabotage against former President—now member of the House of Representatives—Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and two co-accused. Aside from filing the criminal information, Comelec also asked the judge to issue a hold-departure order. Within the day, however, the judge trumped the Comelec request by issuing a warrant of arrest. That development stunned the nation, which quickly asked: “What is electoral sabotage?”
Technically speaking, electoral sabotage is a new offense introduced by Republic Act (RA) 9369. Before RA 9369, election laws already penalized various acts that amounted to the manipulation of election results. The offense of electoral sabotage, however, improved upon those laws by introducing heavier penalties.
RA 9369 did this by, first of all, specifying two classes of acts that, if done on a large scale or in substantial numbers, could earn the offender a lifetime in prison: first, tampering with the results of elections by increasing or decreasing the votes garnered by a candidate; and second, the act of refusing to correct the vote count by crediting the proper number of votes or by deducting tampered votes from the tally.
Second—and more important—RA 9369 enumerated the three situations that would qualify the crime as having been committed “on a large scale or in substantial numbers.” Of these three, the most relevant to recent developments is the first scenario, where the tampering, et cetera, will “adversely affect the results of the election to the national office to the extent that losing candidates are made to appear the winners.”
As an added innovation, RA 9369 also provides that anyone found to be in conspiracy or in connivance with the members of the Boards of Election Inspectors and the Boards of Canvassers involved, “shall be meted the same penalty of life imprisonment.”
Putting all of that into context, remember that the alleged fraud in 2007 concerned the senatorial race—which, of course, involved nationally elected positions. In addition, the proceedings at the Senate Electoral Tribunal clearly indicated that the outcome of the race was clearly affected by the alleged irregularities that subsequently came to light.
The elements essential for the existence of the crime of electoral sabotage were, therefore, unquestionably present. On top of that, Comelec had evidence to show that a conspiracy existed among the accused to secure the fraudulent result they wanted.
Which brings me to that now ubiquitous question: “Why did the Comelec act with such haste?”
Right off the bat, I say Comelec did not act with haste, but it did move decisively.
By the time the joint investigating panel submitted its findings to Comelec on the 16th of November, it had already been in almost continuous session since September. That this fact seems to now escape most people is puzzling, considering that neither Comelec nor the Department of Justice has been particularly shy about updating the public on the progress of the investigation.
After receiving the panel’s report, all that was really left for Comelec to do was to decide whether to accept the finding of probable cause laid before it. The Comelec was certainly not expected to reinvestigate the whole matter and to go over the same ground already traversed exhaustively by the joint panel; there was no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Thus, the decision was made, after exhaustive discussion, to file the appropriate cases in court.
Once ready—the groundwork adequately laid and the evidence properly marshalled—there was no reason to delay the filing of the case with the regional trial court. On the other hand, there was good reason to do so with alacrity.
The allegations of haste probably stem from the tendency of some to see, in this whole situation, only the perceived standoff between the Executive and the judiciary. This is a mistake. While Comelec’s actions did seem to ease some of the pressure, this effect was plain serendipity. Quite apart from that issue, Comelec had a substantial interest in seeing the former President stay.
Her determined attempts to leave the country threatened to frustrate the goal of having her face the charges that were ready to be brought against her. This was—and remains—Comelec’s valid objective, toward the attainment of which considerable time and effort had been expended. Also impossible to ignore was the fact that, right in front of Comelec, was evidence to prove her complicity in the alleged electoral fraud that took place in 2007. In the face of such compelling proof, Comelec would have been criminally remiss in its duty to protect the integrity of elections if it had dragged its feet in hailing the former President to court.