‘Hello, Garci’ general wary about AFP role in May polls

A former military general implicated in the alleged rigging of the 2004 elections to favor the administration has expressed apprehension over the wider role that would be played by soldiers in the coming May elections. In an ambush interview in Camp Aguinaldo Wednesday, former Armed Forces chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr. expressed opposition to the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) decision to allow soldiers to serve as security escorts of the candidates for mayor and up. “As much as possible, they [soldiers] should be far from the polling places and far from the candidates themselves so they need not be made as security detail to candidates," said Esperon, now the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) chief. Esperon said the new Comelec decision is a deviation from the Memorandum of Agreement that the poll body signed with the Department of National Defense (DND) in 2007 limiting the role of soldiers in elections. “The soldiers need not be around the polling centers, they could keep peace to allow the people to vote so in other words they should be manning checkpoints going into highways, running after private armed groups," he said. The 2007 MOA was forged as an offshoot of the Hello, Garci scandal wherein Esperon and three other military generals allegedly helped to ensure the victory of the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the 2004 elections. The scandal referred to audio recordings of conversations between a woman believed to be President Arroyo and a man said to be then Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano talking about rigging the results of the 2004 elections. Esperon denied the accusation. “I was just mentioned as having been probably responsible for the transfer of an officer, for which I was not. The name ‘Garci Generals’ had been so generalized. How was that? What is their proof?" he said. The officer he was referring to was Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, whose assignment was transferred after being identified with the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., President Arroyo’s contender in the 2004 polls. Gudani appeared before a Senate inquiry where he detailed how the administration alleged cheated in Lanao del Sur. Esperon, who was subsequently cleared by a military board of any poll-related wrongdoing, said Gudani was recalled to the Navy headquarters due to the shooting incident in his area on election day where a woman was killed. - KBK, GMANews.TV