By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA
MALAYA
AS charges of bribery, illegal disbursals of millions from the public purse, and electoral frauds continue to pile up day after day after day against him and his camarilla of advisers in government, it’s time perhaps for President Noynoy to start singing the opening lyrics of the song “My Way” – “And now the end is near…” – which may well describe the fate that awaits him for enmeshing himself in a web of lies and corruption of his own making.
Once more, the beleaguered President and his scheming officials stand accused of having misused P72 billion in government savings in 2011 and P55 billion in 2012 under the guise of a “patently illegal” Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) because its creation was never authorized by law.
The latest accusation was hurled by Senator Miriam Santiago and former Senator Joker Arroyo, who was once Executive Secretary of Cory Aquino during her presidency in 1987, after Noynoy Aquino, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, Jr. and other Palace officials justified the disbursements of public funds by citing provisions of the Constitution and the Administrative Code that supposedly authorized the President “to realign savings.” But this was quickly debunked by Santiago and Arroyo, who pointed out they did it without congressional approval. And for this alone, Arroyo said “Malacañang should hale itself to court” while Santiago said Abad should “take the bullet for his boss” for the releases were “unconstitutional and constituted bribery.”
And now, Aquino faces another very, very serious anomaly. This time – surprise of all surprises! – an expose by Margarita de los Reyes-Cojuangco. She revealed a plot by her nephew Noynoy and his officials in the cover-up the electoral frauds during the May 2013 senatorial and congressional elections and that he himself gave P30 million in public funds to carry it out.
She disclosed that “a top Palace executive, an official of the Commission on Elections, and a military general met last July at a residence in Forbes Park, Makati City to plot the cover-up of the electoral frauds that marred the May 2013 senatorial and congressional polls to benefit administration candidates…that began in July and continues to be carried out to this day.”
The cover-up, she said, involved the printing of new ballots to replace the original ballots that contained the real votes so as to match the bloated statement of votes (SOV) that supposedly passed through the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) and servers. And she said her sources in the Palace informed her that the officials from the Palace and the Comelec panicked upon learning that she was conducting a nationwide probe and immediately asked President Aquino for P30 million to carry out the insidious scheme.
“They knew I had proofs to show that indeed the elections were rigged and the results of the polls were pre-programmed to make the administration senatorial and congressional candidates win,” Cojuangco went on. “In the congressional races the results were equally reversely proportional.” This means, she said, that the increase in the votes of the administration congressional candidate exactly equaled the decrease in the votes of the opponent, and that this was seen not just on the municipal level but also in the per precinct level.
In the senatorial race, she continued, the 60-30-10 pattern – 60 percent for the administration, 30 percent for the opposition and 10 percent to independent candidates – was consistent and discovered in 105 cities and municipalities. She said this scheme was first discovered by Math professor Lex Muga of the Ateneo de Manila University.
“Our nationwide investigation showed the 60-30-10 vote scheme was discovered in 59,667 clustered precincts. We also discovered that there was a pattern among candidates, that whenever there was a vote bulk that enters the transparency server, they would get an equal vote share and the percentage share of each candidate would never change dramatically even if the province canvassed were their bailiwicks or weak areas,” said Cojuangco, head of the election watchdog “Isang Bansa Isang Boto”. This group found evidence that the 60-30-10 voting pattern was consistent with the results in that the Team Pnoy candidates got 60 percent of the total votes, the opposition United Nationalist Alliance bets got 30 percent and the rest of the independent bets got the 10 percent.
And she refuted claims by Malacañang that it had already answered the issues she raised. She said those issues were raised for the first time when she uncovered the results of her group’s nationwide probe. “The results of our nationwide investigation showed that the elections were rigged and the list of senatorial and congressional winners had been pre-programmed by manipulating the PCOS and servers. The Team PNoy senatorial candidates were digitally elected and the real voters were disenfranchised.”
In these revelations, which were excerpted from a recent radio interview and published by a non-yellow daily, Conjuangco, wife of the President’s uncle former Rep. Jose Cojuangco, confirmed that her nephew Noynoy was “not only aware of but also involved in 2013 digitally-rigged elections, and that the President himself gave the P30 million to Comelec Chairman Sixto Brilliantes to clean up and cover up the election frauds.”
Two days ago before Mrs. Cojuangco’s highly explosive expose, which could very well rattle the foundations of Malacañang, President Aquino was riled by persistent talks about his having bribed lawmakers to convict then Chief Justice Renato Corona, his links to the pork barrel scam allegedly “masterminded” by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles, and by declarations by Santiago and Arroyo as well as by two eminent deans of law schools that his disbursements of millions of public funds under the DAP were “illegal and unconstitutional.” And, as his wont to do ever since he became president, Noynoy arrogantly dared his critics, “Go ahead, impeach me!”
Yes, Mr. President, and it’s time for you to sing the final lyrics of “My Way”: “…And so I face the final curtain, I did what I had to do… And more and more than this, I did it my way”!
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Quote of the Day: “Vast power and wealth breed political corruption and incite the people to demand rigid honesty in their leaders and public officials.” – Anonymous Commenter
Thought of the Day: “There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away!” – Winston S. Churchill
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