To ask, “Whatever happened to ‘Hello, Garci?'” is a valid move.
“In her Wednesday, May 28, privilege speech Senator Grace Poe brought up once again the ‘Hello, Garci?” scandal involving the purported phone conversation between then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and then Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano allegedly to rig the results of the May 2004 presidential election,” reports TJ Burgonio in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Poe recalled that the said machinations of Arroyo and her group “robbed her late father, action king Fernando Poe Jr., of the presidency.
Poe pointed out that “while Arroyo is facing charges for a separate electoral offense, most of her cohorts—Garcillano, Benjamin Abalos Sr., Lintang Bedol, Rey Sumalipao and Ignacio Bunye—have escaped prosecution.”
In contrast, she also wondered: “In our country many wrongdoers do not get punished while good people are made to suffer when they come out and speak the truth,” she said.
In contrast, the senator wondered what happened to whistleblowers of the scandal. The report enumerated “retired Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani; Sgt. Vidal Doble, the intelligence agent who leaked the Garci tapes; Michaelangelo Zuce, Garcillano’s nephew who testified about the payoffs he made; Abdullah Daligdig, an official of the National Movement for Free Electons who exposed the discrepancies in the COCs (certificates of canvass) in the ARMM; and Samuel Ong, deputy director of the National Bureau of Investigation who exposed the Garci tapes to the media who has since died.”
Poe stated, “It’s often said that Filipinos are too forgiving—that we have short-term memories. How many of us still remember ‘Hello Garci?’ But I believe that there are still many Filipinos who remember as I do. And I know that I won in the 2013 elections precisely because people remember FPJ and the great injustice Mrs. Arroyo committed against the voters. ‘Hello Garci?,’ for better or worse, changed the course of history in the Philippines.”
The questions remains: Will this scandal ever get closure?
Photo from Senator Grace Poe’s Twitter page
