Committee on Public Services chairperson Sen. Grace Poe echoes the concern of port users and other shipping industry stakeholders on the impending effects of increased port fees and charges to be imposed by the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA)  during the Senate panel's inquiry on Wednesday, April 12, 2023. Voltaire F. Domingo, Senate PRIB/File

MANILA -- Senator Grace Poe on Wednesday bewailed the lack of accountability for the so-called "Hello Garci" scandal, as she marked the 20th anniversary of the issue which she believes robbed her father, the late Fernando Poe Jr., of victory in the 2004 Presidential Elections against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

"It is when we fail to act immediately that the Hello Garci crisis continues to haunt us. There were many impeachment complaints but no one was punished for this crime. The guilty remains in power, taking refuge in our collective amnesia to delete our memory of the wrongs they have committed," Poe said at the start of her privileged speech during the plenary session of the Senate on Wednesday.

Poe noted that to this day, no one has been held accountable for this, even if it led to several impeachment complaints and was supposedly part of the reasons for the so-called Fertilizer Fund Scam and even connected to the 2009 Maguindanao Massacre.

Poe explained this is not personal.

"History is neither political nor personal. Hindi namemersonal ang kasaysayan. Inihahayag lang nito ang katotohanan. Paalala ito sa atin na dapat mamili kung anong legasiyang nais nating iwanan sa ating mga anak," she said.

[History does not take things personally. It merely speaks the truth. It is a reminder that we should choose what legacy we should leave our children.]

"Twenty years ago this month, a phone call changed the course of our country’s history,"  Poe added.

"To jog our collective memories, recorded phone calls between a presidential candidate who was then trailing behind the votes, and then-Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, resulted in the biggest electoral crisis that this country has seen. To be specific, there were around fifteen calls but it was one phone call that echoes in our history forever as 'Hello Garci.' The ignominy still rings today and its brazenness echoes in eternity," Poe added.

While she did not name Arroyo, Poe's reference to her father's chief election rival was clear.

"The phone call recorded a woman's voice  panic-buying for votes; in fact, it recorded a presidential nominee, pressing Election Commissioner Garci who was on the other end of the line, to produce one million votes," Poe said. "It was not the polite conversation one would expect between a sitting President and a constitutional officer. To 85 million eavesdropping Filipinos, it confirmed an open secret about our elections – that votes can be bought and, for those that could not be bought, can be changed."

Poe recalled that back then, Garcillano gave assurances even if he was not counting the votes, that the one million votes would be reflected in the Certificates of Canvass (COCs). She also recalled how concerns about the elections were minimized.

"And when discrepancies were pointed out during the congressional canvass, they were ignored and buried under an avalanche of 'Noted,' 'Noted,' 'Noted,'" Poe said. "And that was how Filipinos lost the election in 2004; the loser was proclaimed winner. "

Arroyo opens up about 'Hello Garci:' I won elections fair and square

Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo attends President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address at the Opening of the 19th Congress on July 24, 2023. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News/File

Arroyo's camp has not responded to requests for comment regarding Poe's statement.

Back in 2022, Arroyo published her memoir "Deus Ex Machina" where for the first time in years, she opened up about her controversial political career and intriguing private life. There, she categorically denied cheating in 2004 polls, detailing her side of the story in the "Hello Garci" scandal. 

The legitimacy of her victory had been under question since so-called "Hello Garci" audio recordings surfaced in 2005. In the book, Arroyo devoted about 20 pages to address this, and admitted making the controversial phone call to Garcilliano.

"I heard that privately Commissioner Garcilliano told people, I didn’t call her, she called me. He is correct to pass the blame to me," Arroyo wrote on page 145. "People who know my management style know I am constantly on the phone keeping track of developments, a type of micromanagement that in my career as government executive I found to produce action and results quickly. Perhaps this is one time I was too hasty to act without deeper reflection."

"Where do I stand on the question of I am sorry now some 15 years later? In the long run it is better to own up to one's self inflicted error. It was a lapse in judgment. Which is a genteel way of acknowledging the phone call was a mistake," Arroyo said on page 147.

However, Arroyo also categorically said that she did not cheat to win.

"That should be clear to any unbiased person looking at two straightforward facts: First by the time of the phone call, all the votes had already been counted and the count accepted by the Comelec," she explained on page 144. "Second, the certificates of canvass showing that I had won by a million votes were already used to proclaim the winning senators."

"The phone conversation took place on May 24, the day the top 11 senators were already proclaimed. The votes for the twelfth and thirteenth senators were still being canvassed, but the number of votes at stake would not have wiped out my lead," she added on page 145.

On page 154 of her memoir, she recalled that closer to the election, after a hard-fought campaign, she was already leading the surveys: "In March 2004, 2 months before the elections, SWS found 55 percent satisfied with my performance. Because the voting public knew that I was not just a strong but also a competent and hard working president."

"I was confident that if I worked the hardest among all the candidates, on the campaign trail, then I could beat any candidate who did not match those qualifications. And I did," she added. "I will explain how I did it and any objective analyst will, when presented with the cold facts, realize that I won the elections fair and square."

The Senate had probed the scandal but Comelec officials and others involved in the controversy could no longer be held accountable because the five-year prescription period for the filing of cases already lapsed in 2014.

Arroyo is now on her 4th non-consecutive term as Pampanga 2nd District Representative, with a one-year term as Speaker post presidency from 2018-2019. She has won all cases that previously kept her in jail.

WHY POE THINKS THE PH SHOULD NOT FORGET

Sen. Grace Poe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Services, is joined by NLEX officials during an inspection of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) Connector Project, Caloocan to Espana segments on February 9, 2023. Jonathan Cellona, ABS-CBN News/File

Poe explained that two decades hence, she speaks up not as her father's daughter but as a senator of the Republic. 

"In doing so, I am just taking the cue from my father who died heartbroken for the people who were let down by the system. But while the father may have forgiven those who did the people wrong, the daughter will never forget their names nor the crimes that were committed. More than the need to move on, we need to move forward. Because I believe that it is not the passing of time that heals wounds, or mends wrongs," she said.

Poe explained that the past can only be cured if there are remedies that will prevent it from happening again, such as making sure sanctions await those who try to commit it once more. 

She believes that the "Hello Garci" scandal failed to birth laws that would prevent it from being repeated.

"Yes, there were laws passed, like poll computerization, and minor fixes, but the biggest scourge, the buying of votes, has not been purged out of our politics," said Poe. "Our counting may have turned electronic but our machines are fast aging before our system has even fully caught up."

"Out of 97,000 aging machines, more than 1,300 malfunctioned in the last national elections in 2022. This resulted in hours of waiting for voters who were forced to leave their filled-up ballots to be later fed into the machines by election officers, effectively casting doubts on the integrity of these votes," she added.

Poe added that much also needs to be done in the electoral landscape.

"These include redefining what electoral crimes words like 'premature campaigning,' 'vote-buying,' and 'vote-selling' cover. Campaigning should effectively start as soon as candidacy is filed, and vote-buying should include all possible modes like the buying of votes through e-wallets which we saw in 2022," Poe said. "So much must be done in so little time. We are fast approaching the midterm national elections next year and yet the landscape has not changed much since the electoral crisis two decades ago."

FPJ's running-mate, now Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, says she has moved forward after losing a lot of friends in the wake of the 2004 elections. 

"They did not want to touch me with a 10-foot pole because I was fighting it in the Supreme Court and we had a very powerful sitting president then. But that was 20 years ago. Let it be," Legarda said as she recalled the 2004 polls. 

Legarda vowed to turn over some of the certificates of canvass from the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential elections to Senator Poe.

Poe has filed Senate Bill 2664 which seeks to define the crime of cyber vote buying and vote selling.

"Alongside this digital shift is the penetration and proliferation of cybercriminals in vote buying and vote selling schemes through money mules. These money mules use electronic money transfer methods to facilitate vote buying and vote selling. Unlike traditional vote-buying where the candidates physically give out money, it is a challenge to detect the source of these digital schemes," Poe said in her explanatory note.

Poe's bill seeks to cover buying and selling of votes through electronic means or using information and communications technologies, including but not exclusive to websites,  software and applications for online banking and money remittances. Poe proposes to penalize this with 6-10 years in jail without probation.