PNP gives cop in 2004 ‘poll fraud’ deadline to report for work

The Philippine National Police (PNP) has given Senior Superintendent Rafael Santiago, who claimed to have participated in the rigging of the 2004 presidential elections, until midnight of Tuesday to report for work. PNP chief Director General Raul Bacalzo was quoted in a GMA News TV Live report as saying that Santiago risks losing his monthly salary and getting his name stricken off the list of policemen in active service if he does not show up. Santiago surfaced last July 28 to confess that he was among a group of policemen from the PNP's Special Action Force who, in 2005, replaced real election returns with fake ones. The fraud allegedly benefited then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The next day, Santiago and the other policemen who participated in the supposed break-in at the Batasan Pambansa, where the ERs were stored, turned over pieces of evidence to the Department of Justice, including what they claimed were the authentic ERs.

Santiago's revelations came on the heels of similar poll fraud claims in the 2004 and 2007 elections made by Maguindanao massacre suspect Zaldy Ampatuan and former Maguindanao poll supervisor Lintang Bedol. The revelations have already led to the resignation of Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, who is the subject of a poll protest before the Senate Electoral Tribunal and allegedly the beneficiary of poll fraud in Mindanao in the 2007 mid-term elections. For their part, Mrs. Arroyo’s camp, through her lawyer Raul Lambino, had repeatedly denied the accusations, saying they were part of an ongoing “vilification campaign" by the present administration. - Mark D. Merueñas/KBK, GMA News