Poll cheat report slams Arroyo, foes for cospiracy

Poll cheat report slams Arroyo, foes for cospiracy

John O'Callaghan, Reuters/Manila

The Philippine government tried to cover up election cheating
allegations last year but was battling a conspiracy to oust
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a draft report by a
congressional committee showed.

The document, reported in the Philippine Daily Inquirer
newspaper on Wednesday, is being discussed by five panels from
the lower house of Congress looking into opposition claims that
Arroyo conspired with an election official to seal her victory.

The "Hello Garci" tapes were a series of audio recordings
allegedly featuring Arroyo talking by telephone with former
election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano about rigging the
presidential election on May 10, 2004.

The tapes mysteriously surfaced in June, sparking months of
crisis for the president, including desertions from her Cabinet
and a failed impeachment in September.

Arroyo's foes in Congress and in regular street protests are
pressing demands she step down, but the turmoil has largely
subsided without the middle-class anger that toppled dictator
Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada as president in 2001.

Arroyo, whose new term is due to run until 2010, apologized on
television in June for talking to an election official but did
not say it was Garcillano and insisted she did nothing wrong.

The author of the draft report, Congressman Gilbert Remulla,
said the five committees hoped to reach conclusions by next week.

"Everything will be there, from the cover-up to the conspiracy
by the opposition," said Remulla, a member of the ruling
coalition who nonetheless voted in favor of ousting Arroyo during
the failed impeachment.

"We're not taking any sides. I know that we cannot make
everybody happy with the report," he told Reuters.

President Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, called the
allegations of a cover-up "grossly unfair".

"But we have to point out that some committee members
themselves were on fishing and witch-hunting expeditions and were
using the probe as a political platform," he said in a statement.

The source of the tapes has yet to be established and many
questions remain, including how the president's phone
conversations were tapped and for whom.

The recordings, whether real or altered, "just materialized
out of thin air and fell fortuitously on the laps of the persons
who brought them to public attention", the draft report said.

Other recordings released by the government, purportedly
showing Estrada conspiring with unknown people to assassinate
Arroyo, were "suspiciously short and clearly spurious, not to say
unquestionably fabricated", it said.

Arroyo's administration gave "no sincere co-operation" to the
congressional inquiry and "contributed nothing toward arriving at
the truth" about the tapes, said the report.

Arroyo's officials have said they consider the matter to be
closed and the focus is now back on the economy, with a broader
sales tax that will help the government cut its chronic budget
deficits and the costs of borrowing money.

But Roilo Golez, a congressman and former national security
adviser who left Arroyo's party, said on television: "It will
never be closed until Commissioner Garcillano has appeared".

Garcillano's whereabouts are not known after he slipped out of
the Philippines in July. Media have reported sightings in
Singapore, Britain and South America but the chat at diplomatic
events and in coffee shops is that he could be dead.