According to Herminigildo Estrella, Poe would have won the 2004 elections were it not for the vote padding and shaving.
During the Senate inquiry into the wiretapping scandal against the President, Estrella presented a study he conducted on the 2004 elections comparing the election returns sent to the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), certificates of canvass (COC) and statements of votes.
Estrella presented only the first part of his study, covering the results in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
The study was an offshoot of the wiretapped "Hello, Garci" conversations in which former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, Mrs. Arroyo and other officials allegedly discussed cheating in the 2004 elections.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Arroyo’s election lawyer Romeo Macalintal said Malacañang will no longer comment on the matter of the allegations against the President.
Macalintal, who represents the President on election matters, held a press conference at the Manila Hotel yesterday afternoon to make a final statement on the poll fraud allegations against Mrs. Arroyo.
"There being no more real party in interest nor anybody to question the results, I have already advised the President not to comment anymore on this case," Macalintal said. "If she would be asked (about the matter) she will not comment and her answer would be very simple: ‘This case is closed and terminated."
"Now and forever, she will not comment anymore unless directed by a competent authority," Macalintal said.
Presidential political adviser Gabriel Claudio also leapt to the President’s defense, asking: "Who on earth is Mr. Estrella and what makes a management consultant like him suddenly an election expert, particularly on the 2004 polls?"
Claudio also asked why Estrella did not "share his expertise in the countless public fora and congressional investigations on the 2004 elections being conducted for the past 10 months."
He said "the Senate really seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel or beating a dead horse on this. Why don’t they just go to the PET(Presidential Electoral Tribunal) which is doing the revision and see if telltale signs of cheating in the presidential election exist?" he asked.
"After all, the same ERs (election returns) and other election documents being scrutinized in the electoral protest would also reveal the truth about the results in the election for president," Claudio said. "If they wish, the senators may also help former Sen. (Loren) Legarda raise enough money to expand the coverage of PET revision to include all 200,000 precincts nationwide instead of wasting precious time in the Senate that should otherwise go to legislation."
However, by the time the provincial COCs came out, the results were reversed in favor of Mrs. Arroyo, he said.
On the basis of the COCs read in Congress, Mrs. Arroyo led Poe in the 2004 elections by around 1.1 million votes.
According to Estrella, the alleged vote padding in Mindanao resulted in an addition of around 365,000 votes for Mrs. Arroyo, which he said were taken from the votes for Poe.
Overall, 661,000 votes were supposedly affected by the alleged vote shaving and padding operations of the Arroyo camp.
He also said the vote padding was worst in the provinces of Pampanga, Cebu, Iloilo and Bohol or "PCIB," where a total of 951,695 votes were added to the ballot total of Mrs. Arroyo.
After subtracting the "PCIB" padded votes from Mrs. Arroyo’s 1.1 million margin of victory, Estrella said the President would be left with a lead of just 171,000 votes over Poe.
When the allegedly padded votes in Mindanao are subtracted from the ballots for Mrs. Arroyo, Poe would have begun to take the lead by 194,000 votes, he said.
Finally, when all of the votes allegedly taken from Poe are returned to his tally, Poe would end up leading Mrs. Arroyo by around 489,000 votes, Estrella said.
He said Poe’s margin of victory would have been even bigger if the votes allegedly taken from him in the National Capital Region (NCR), Regions I to V and Regions IX to XII were included in the final vote tally.
Estrella said he conducted the study on his own initiative to expose massive cheating in the 2004 elections, though he also admitted that he was initially commissioned to conduct this study by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
Estrella said Pimentel hired him to provide a report on which areas of the country carried the risk of electoral fraud, even under a computerized electoral system.
Philippine Greens Institute executive director Roberto Verzola presented his study showing that there was a 50.5-percent discrepancy between the Namfrel and Congress tallies in the ARMM followed by a 13.5-percent discrepancy in Central Mindanao. PGI is a political and environmental non-government organization (NGO).
Verzola said the worst discrepancies were recorded in Basilan at 75.1 percent; Sultan Kudarat, 65.4 percent; Lanao del Sur, 58 percent; Sulu, 41.3 percent; Tawi-Tawi, 35.9 percent; Maguindanao, 18.7 percent; and Lanao del Norte, 16.2 percent.
"The discrepancies all indicated cheating in favor of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo," he said.
At the same hearing, Comelec Commissioner Resurreccion Borra admitted that some cheating did happen in the 2004 elections, most likely at the provincial canvassing level, though he said the discussion is now moot because the winners have already been proclaimed.
"I did not conclude massive cheating but there was cheating. The conclusion is that there was cheating," Borra said, responding to queries.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said "it’s a pity" the Senate decided to revive the issue of the wiretapping controversy in what he and Claudio said was a bid to divert attention from the burning issue of Charter change.
"There are so many things that they can devote their energies to. First of all, there is the budget that must be approved soon in order to obviate all questions about the utilization of funds," Bunye said.
"There is also the anti-terror bill and the anti-smuggling bill," he added. "There are so many things that should be attended rather than reviving this dead issue."
He said the senators must give full priority to the passage of the proposed General Appropriations Act (GAA) to remove any doubts about how public funds will be allocated for the remainder of the year.
Senators earlier alleged that a reenacted 2005 budget would allow the administration to use funds for already completed projects on other initiatives, such as amending the 1987 Constitution.
Bunye said the anti-smuggling bill was approved by the House of Representatives in June 2005, but has yet to see the "light out of the committee level in the Senate a year later."
Earlier, he also called on legislators to fine-tune the anti-terrorism bill so there would be no violation of human rights, despite the adoption of stronger measures against suspected terrorists.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to approve the budget bill on third and final reading this week, four months behind schedule.
The budget is the single most important piece of legislation that Congress is supposed to approve before the end of each calendar year.
Congress is set to go on their five-week Lenten break this weekend and session resumes on May 15 until June 9 before the legislature goes on its mandatory annual adjournment preparatory to its third and last regular session, which begins on July 24.
This gives the lawmakers a very short period of time to pass the budget or allow the administration to operate on a reenacted budget.
Between May 15 and June 9, or about one month, is the time given to the Senate to approve its own version of the budget. The bicameral conference on the measure will have to be squeezed into that short timeframe. — With Evelyn Macairan