PARALLEL OPERATIONS
The extent of the vote-padding and shaving was probably due to the fact that more than one group was at work. Even as Garcillano and Zuce were performing their tasks, another group of operators, this one linked to the First Gentleman, was also operating in Lanao. The point man for this parallel operation was supposedly Moner, the shar'iah court judge who had become friendly with Mike Arroyo.

	GUARDING THE BALLOT. Marine secures the voting in Lanao del Sur.

Moner is a Maranao politician who ran for the Lanao del Sur governorship in 1998 but lost. In 2004. he founded the Lanao Unity Movement for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Mike Arroyo was even there during the induction of its officers in April that year. Moner told "The Probe Team" he aligned himself with the Arroyos through the intercession of his brother-in-law, who was an assistant of Alfonso Cusi, a close friend of the First Gentleman and then general manager of the Philippine Ports Authority. He said his group volunteered to campaign for President Arroyo and to help her win in Muslim Mindanao.

AbduI Wahab Batugan, a former Comelec election officer and Moner's business partner in a consultancy firm, recounted that the judge had "assigned" him to Lanao del Sur during the counting. He recalled that on May 13, 2004, he and Moner went to Marawi to talk to election officers there about how to make the president win. "We talked to them para baliktarin ynng COCs (to reverse the certificates of canvass)," he says. They also brought cash with them, money that they said was given to Moner by Cusi and the First Gentleman. For the Lanao del Sur operations, says Batugan, they distributed about Pl million in cash to elections personnel. "Yang iba, pagbigay namin ng pera, kami na nag-fill up...Kami na ang nagsulat ng numero sa COC (In some cases, after giving the money, we filled up the forms ourselves, we wrote out the numbers in the COCs)," he said.

Batugan admitted that it was in Marawi where they manufactured several COCs. "I remember the one in Wao," he said in Tagalog. "I think it was 7,000 votes for FPJ and 3,000 plus for GMA. Tapos binaligtad. Nabaligtad. Ganu'n ang nangyari. (It was reversed. It got reversed. That's what happened.)"

The paper trail proves Batugan right. The precinct-level election returns collected by Namfrel show that Poe got 7,647 votes in Wao, while Mrs. Arroyo got only 3,816. But the ratio was indeed reversed in the certificate of canvass, where the president's votes mysteriously doubled to 7,614, while Poe's were reduced to only 4,967.

The reason Batugan and his friends are talking now is that they feel betrayed. They said they took part in several dagdag-bawas operations, not just in Lanao del Sur but also in other places in Muslim Mindanao. But more than a year after the elections, they had not yet been given the rewards they were promised. In fact, in September 2004, two members of the Lanao Unity Movement wrote Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel 'Mikey' Arroyo, saying that during the canvassing, they had gone to Jolo "to facilitate and ensure that all votes be for PGMA in consideration for an amount of money given to each BEI (board of election inspectors) and local election officer."

The letter also said that they had not been given much money for their efforts but they did the work because of the promise of government jobs. "But somehow." the letter observed ruefully, "their dangerous role in PGMA victory as far as the two provinces of Lanao and Sulu are concerned" had not been duly rewarded.

The letter was ignored.

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the 2004 elections haunt Lanao del Sur, and they refuse to rest. — With additional research by Avigail Olarte