Garcillano: what was he there for?

We have to start at the beginning. Why did President Arroyo appoint Virgilio Garcillano election commissioner in the first place? Did Garcillano’s career demonstrate that he had the necessary qualities of fairness and probity to carry out the tasks of this important position? No it did not. In fact, in country full of electoral fraudsters, you would be hard put to find anyone less suitable for the position. The infamous term “dagdag bawas” (vote adding and subtraction) was INVENTED to describe Garcillano’s alleged electoral cheating in Mindanao. Here is Sheila Coronel in the PCIJ blog:

... he has a checkered past. In political circles, Garcillano’s reputation is that of an election “technician” or “mechanic,” someone with intimate knowledge of how the counting and canvassing procedures work and how they could be manipulated. So when he was appointed election commissioner on February 11, 2004, soon after the presidential campaign had kicked off, there were such loud howls of protest that not even the President’s staunchest defenders rose to his defense.

As Comelec regional director for Northern Mindanao, a post that he held until his retirement in 2002, Garcillano had been linked to dagdag bawas or vote padding and shaving operations. Dagdag bawas is by now a perfected technology, and it involves not retail doctoring of election returns at the precinct level, but large-scale manipulation of canvass sheets at the municipal and provincial levels.

Senator Pimentel has accused Garcillano not only of involvement in dagdag bawas operations but also of distributing money in previous elections to Comelec officials from the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Pimentel also alleged that at a private dinner with Mrs. Arroyo on January 21, 2004, Garcilliano had boasted he could do a lot to help her in the election.

I think the only possible conclusion is that the President appointed Garcillano so she could ensure her re-election, by hook or by crook. If someone can give me another explanation, I’d love to hear it.

A number of commentators have argued that the tapes show a very makulit (annoyingly insistent) President but that they don’t actually show her instructing Garcillano to cheat. Well…

Given that (i) the President appointed a commissioner with such a shady background, (ii) she was on the phone to him night and day, a clear violation of ethics if not actually against the law, (iii) Garcillano used words like "pagpataas" (upward adjustment), (iv) the Palace has reacted in an extraordinarily guilty way – I mean, what else can we conclude?