NAMFREL and The Legend of FPJ's Contrabida

Greetings, Dear Readers! 


I have been missing in action for almost a year, but today I start making up for lost time. 


News reports have flooded in that the venerable election watchdog NAMFREL is supporting the conduct of an inquiry into allegations of cheating during the 2004 Philippine presidential elections. Granted this has nothing to do with TheEconomizer's avowed interests of economics or finance, it nonetheless resides in a lingering intuition in TheEconomizer's heart. 


And so here it is. 


If all of this engenders in you a sense of deja vu, it is because "calls" like this have been heard before, notably during the height of the Hello Garci scandal in 2005. But what really grates is the ventriloquism of NAMFREL and the Legend of FPJ. 


Back in 2004, the Secretary General of NAMFREL, Guillermo ("Bill") Luz, proclaimed in front of TV cameras that COMELEC tally sheets showing that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was leading her opponent, Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ), in the presdiential race, were not materially different from the results of the NAMFREL Quick Count and other NAMFREL tallies. At the least, the differences were not material enough to affect the outcome, which was a win by GMA. Indeed, in the Terminal Report of NAMFREL released on the 5th of June, 2004, GMA was leading by almost 700,000 votes (the final COMELEC tally showed that GMA had won by 1.1 million votes). 


Fast forward two years later, after the Hello Garci scandal had changed everybody's perception of GMA from a technocrat to a trapo, the very same Guillermo Luz told ABS-CBN news that he could no longer vouch for the legitimacy of the 2004 election results because certain other information and data might not have been disclosed by the COMELEC to NAMFREL and the general public. In effect, Mr. Luz was attempting to distance NAMFREL from the election results and the GMA presidency. And, it seems, from NAMFREL's own Quick Count. 


This is not the place to discuss the merits or demerits of flip-flopping, or indeed, the merits or demerits of NAMFREL being stripped of its electoral-watchdog status by the COMELEC during the 2010 national elections in favor of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV). However, this is the place to question the attempt by NAMFREL to gain credibility by surrendering it. 


In 2004, NAMFREL declared that GMA had won, based on its own count. If two years later it could not support that proclamation, because of data it MIGHT not have, then that is NAMFREL's problem. Indeed, the only thing that can be said to describe this behavior is that it follows the Legend of FPJ's contrabida. 


One hopes the plot is still familiar. This powerful local warlord, at whose command the local populace shakes in terror, tortures some poor farmer, who turns out to be the father of the woman who tugs at FPJ's heart. After much gunfire and more rapid-fire punching, the warlord is reduced to begging FPJ for his life, saying he did not really touch the woman's father, it was his predecessor wot won it. 


Which brings us back to NAMFREL. Bill Luz now runs the Ayala Foundation as Executive Director, to which TheEconomizer can attest personally, having seen him in the lobby of the BPI Bldg, at whose 10th Floor that Foundation holds office. In July 2011, the current secretary general of NAMFREL declares in a grammatically and verbally venturesome manner NAMFREL's support for an inquiry. Perhaps then he can blame his predecessor for blessing GMA's win back in 2004.