Is DOJ preempting Comelec on Abalos case?
THERE IS something very strange going on in the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections on the electoral sabotage case against former Chair Benjamin Abalos. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima keeps saying that two of Abalos’ co-accused in the case—Lilian Radam, former South Cotabato election supervisor, and Yogi Martirizar, former election supervisor of North Cotabato—would be dropped from the case and used as state witnesses against Abalos. On the other hand, Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes and Commissioner Rene Sarmiento deny that the poll body is withdrawing the criminal charges against them.
“There is no resolution approved to withdraw the case against them… and there is no reason to drop the case,” Sarmiento said.
In previous interviews, Brillantes admitted that while the testimonies of Radam and Martirizar were vital to the cases against Abalos, they were not the “least guilty” because they were the ones who did the cheating,
Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, who had originally filed the electoral sabotage cases, strongly objected to the idea of dropping the charges against Radam and Martirizar. Pimentel backed the position of the Comelec that “there is no reason to drop the case” against the two poll officials.
“As far as I am concerned, lawyers Lilian Suan Radam and Yogi Martirizar were the most guilty of the accused, that’s why I filed the criminal charges against them,” Pimentel said in Davao.
Under the law, only the least guilty of the accused can be used as state witnesses against their co-accused.
Pimentel stressed that when he filed the charges against Radam and Martirizar, they both denied involvement in the alleged cheating, prompting him to file the 11 counts of electoral sabotage against Radam. And when the court ordered the arrest of the two, they both went into hiding for four years and surfaced only later to implicate Abalos in the alleged cheating.
“An accused can point to anybody as the mastermind but that will not absolve him or her from criminal liabilities,” Pimentel said.
Koko’s father, former Senate President Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., agreed with his son’s position, because turning a principal suspect as state witness will lead to the dismissal of the poll fraud case against Radam and Mar-
tirizar.
“It’s like making the triggerman in a murder case a state witness just to pin down the alleged mastermind of the crime,” said the former senator.
However, Secretary De Lima has confirmed that Radam and Martirizar are being considered as state witnesses. De Lima has been talking about the case against Abalos with such regularity that lawyers suspect she is obsessed with preempting the Comelec’s decision on the issue (of clearing Radam and Martirizar and throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at Abalos).
The justice secretary has arrogated unto herself the job of speaking on behalf of the DOJ-Comelec panel, thus pulling the rug from under Chair Brillantes. (The Comelec is an independent constitutional body.) More than that, Radam and Martirizar have already been arraigned and 23 warrants of arrest have been issued against them. So why is De Lima doing this?
Abalos’ counsel, lawyer Brigido Dulay, howled that Radam and Martirizar are being defended by lawyer Nena Santos, a law school classmate of De Lima. Dulay hinted at a possible conflict of interest on the part of De Lima because of her close relationship with the counsel of Radam and Martirizar. De Lima however maintains that she is not close to Santos.
Looking back, it was Abalos, no less, who ordered the books thrown at the two poll officials who disappeared after dozens of cases were filed against them and who surfaced only four years later. All the denials of the two were dismissed by the Comelec en banc, which concluded that they had committed electoral offenses and must be prosecuted.
From Abalos to Chair Jose Melo, the Comelec never wavered in having the erring officials prosecuted.
From the time the Comelec charged them in June 2007, Radam and Martirizar offered the same defenses and never mentioned Abalos as the mastermind. But when they surfaced four years later, they had affidavits pointing to Abalos as “the mastermind.” The two would not have sung a different tune if they did not get a guarantee that they would not be prosecuted if they testified against Abalos.
Abalos complained against the unfair treatment against him, saying that the DOJ was in a hurry to charge him, going to the extent of denying him the right to controvert the purported evidence against him offered by Radam and Martirizar. The two claimed that it was during a meeting in one restaurant somewhere that Abalos talked about an order from Malacañang to assure a 12-0 victory for the Arroyo Team Unity senatorial slate.
He had sought to respond to the Radam-Martirizar affidavits but an order issued by the joint DOJ-Comelec panel on Nov. 15, 2011, said it was ready to resolve the case.
In less than 24 hours, it did resolve the case. A dozen charges for electoral sabotage were filed against Abalos et al. the following day.
