An election officer who gambled his retirement in favor of running for board member under the banner of the late Fernando Poe, Jr. has come out in the open to narrate what he knew of the alleged fraud in the 2004 presidential elections in the province of Bohol. He did lose in that elections but to this day he believes that his dignity is still intact. Jobless as a result, he too lost the accrued benefits due him as a resigned election registrar of Corella. Alfredo Elmer Doblas, former election registrar of Guindulman and lastly in Corella signed an affidavit dated August 9 exposing alleged fraud in the Bohol presidential elections “on the dictates of his own free will”. What arose his motivation to blew the whistle on the conduct of the 2004 polls was the current interest shown by the joint efforts of the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections to ferret out the truth in the victory of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president in 2004.

The joint scrutiny was triggered by the revelation of retired Col. Rafael Santiago who headed a special operations team tasked to switch fraudulent election returns stocked at the Batasan complex when the defeated presidential candidate threatened to call for a recount. The joint investigation also fanned calls for military men as mentioned in the so-called “Garci tapes” to be investigated for them to shed light of their alleged roles to rig the elections particularly in Mindanao. As an aftermath of the 2004 polls, there were talks then that Bohol was one of the provinces were fraud was committed in favour of Arroyo along with Cebu and Pampanga. It was in Cebu and Bohol that GMA won by a comfortable margin prompting the allegations of the elections in the two provinces to have been stolen. The same wild talks fizzled out as soon as interest of alleged cheating subsided. The latest noises attending the 2004 cheating operations broke into the open as soon as Col Santiago made the startling revelations. This was seconded with the call to investigate by party-list representatives Neri Colmares and Teddy Casino to pursue the leads uncovered but ignored by the fact-finding panel that prepared the Mayuga Report despite resistance from the majority to revisit the alleged theft of the 2004 presidential election.

OUT OF THE BLUE

Against this backdrop, Doblas came out of the blue to share his own version of the cheating in Bohol. In an interview, Doblas attested to the Post the authenticity of his affidavit which he submitted to the legal department of the Comelec only last week. He said he went to Manila last week to furnish the Comelec department of an affidavit whose contents were practically extracted from an earlier one he executed in 2004. Three lawyers of the late Fernando Poe, Jr. reportedly interviewed Doblas regarding his revelation of of fraud in at least three towns in Bohol. The same affidavit was only marked “noted” when he was asked to testify before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

SOVs & ERs

In the same sworn statement Doblas alleged that during his own check around the towns on May 11 to 13, 2004 he “discovered massive irregularities in the statement of votes (SOVs) and the election returns (ERs) where the total number of registered voters in most precincts minus those who actually voted did not tally or were marked zero.” Believing that it was a widespread operations, he consulted some of his former colleagues in the Comelec if they knew about the alleged cheating he had documented. The resigned election registrar said his colleagues could not explain the  discrepancy of the votes of GMA and those of FPJ. But he was told of the “common reply that they were instructed to do so: either zero or no figure at all (blank).” But he did not identify who the election officers were. This prompted him to inform the KNP headquarters of this information and asked for an investigator “to check the massive irregularities in the municipal election returns,” he said. In at least three towns in the third district—Pilar, Carmen and S-Bullones, Doblas discovered irregularities in the SOVs and ERs. He said the total number of voters in most precincts where the total number of registered voters in most precincts minus those who actually voted did not tally or were marked zero as shown in this example: Total number of registered voters—200; Total number of actually registered—162; and Total number of those who did not vote—0.

This was the time that he consulted his colleagues and he was told that a seminar for election registrars in Cebu held before the May 2004 elections was under instructions to put zero or no figure at all in the phrase total number of those who did not vote. At the same time, the whistle blower also revealed that at the height of the FPJ protest, he led Manila years in locating at least seven residents in the three towns to execute affidavits of what they new about election anomalies in their respective places. He said the seven made identical declarations that they saw ballots already filled with the name GMA. When they confronted the teachers about this illegal entries they were told that they only received the GMA-filled ballots from people they do not know. Still a few days after the 2004 polls, probers came and then governor now congressman Rene Relampagos instructed Doblas to meet the investigating team. He said the team was composed of a general, a Muslim and a lawyer, whose names he could no longer remember. They met at Metro Center Hotel, in this city.

After the meeting, he executed a sworn statement and he “promised willingness to testify should there be a congressional inquiry in the future.” Relampagos, then head of the LDP Bohol reportedly coalesced with KNP, lost to then governor now Cong. Erico Aumetado (2 nd Dist). For the second time in 2004, Relampagos lost to Aumentado with their first encounter in 2001. Contacted to comment on Doblas affidavit, Relampagos, in a text message, said “we welcome it along with others so the truth will come out”. Aside from the towns of Pilar, Sierra-Bullones, Carmen, , Doblas also discovered discrepancies in the SOVs and ERs in Batuan, Bilar and Loboc. Although he is from Inabanga, he ran for board member in the third district as a registered voter of Guindulman. He was assigned in Guindulman as election registrar before he was transferred to Corella. With reports from Ric Obedencio)