FINAL REPORT - Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Members of the Joint Committee and the lawyers for presidential
candidate Poe and vice-presidential candidate Loren Legarda
manifested their comments and observations on as well as
objections to the certificates of canvass and supporting statements
of votes coming from several places pointing to electoral fraud in
said places and moved for the opening of the election returns from
the said places and the counting of votes as they appear in said election
returns submitted to Congress on the ground that the true will of the
people in these places as expressed and tallied in the election returns
had been altered by adding votes for Arroyo/de Castro and the municipal
certificates of canvass. In the course of the proceedings, two facts
stand out: a) the Majority Members of the Joint Committee and the
lawyer for GMA have not objected to any single COC, and b) the
Majority Members of the Joint Committee have uniformedly and
consistently refused to allow the opening and tabulation of the
election returns in spite of concrete evidence of electoral
irregularities, anomalies and fraud appearing on the face of the
electoral documents before the Joint Committee. (pp. 24-25;
emphasis supplied)
The CCTA is dismayed that, according to a sworn statement submitted the
Presidium by Atty. Sixto Brillantes, “the Congress copies of the ERs were replaced,
switched and substituted with fake ERs, the entries of which coincide and tally with
the SOV”. There must be serious efforts, therefore, to preserve the integrity of the
ERs currently under the custody of the COMELEC as a means of comparison to the
Congressional COC’s should a genuine investigation be undertaken.
II. The Continued and Continuing
Deception and Cover-Up
To this day, President Arroyo and her allied officials insult the intelligence of the
entire Filipino people by insisting on her simple and simplistic “apology for lapse of
judgment” as sufficient “closure” for the national crisis.
From the confluence of acts and tactics subsequently adopted by them, the
President and her executive officials clearly thought, as they still think, that they
could and can camouflage her illegitimate presidency, by means fair or foul. But we
think that any fairly intelligent, right-thinking Filipino will see through these
continuing, relentless attempts at a cover-up that simply serve to confirm and make
more stark the factual and moral guilt of this administration.
We feel that the pieces of the puzzle will clearly fit into place with a bird’s eyeview
of pertinent events. Hence we have set forth below a summary timeline, based on
the afore-described materials as well as all other relevant information that have come
to public knowledge and have been admitted or have not been denied, official
documents, official information, sworn statements and testimonies and the like, by
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