Press Release
July 1, 2009

Press Statement of Loren Legarda

ON BREAKING UP RALLIES

The break-up by the police and the Presidential Security Guard of a demonstration by an anti-administration protest group in front of Malacañang last Tuesday is a violation of the right to free speech and peaceful assembly for redress of grievances. It also showed the bias of the police and PSG because at the same time it allowed a pro-administration group to hold a rally at a site near the Palace.

The incident demonstrates that this administration has no respect for the constitutional rights of its citizens, especially in the exercise of freedom of speech and assembly.

But how long could this go on until the people lose their patience as they did in the people power uprising of 1986?

ON OMBUDSMAN'S BOMBING

The Philippine National Police has declared a high security alert in the wake of the bombing last Sunday at the Ombudsman's Office in Quezon which hurt no one. Then a package of C4 plastics explosives, said to be usually used by the military, was found near a condominium on Katipunan Avenue, also in Quezon City.

Although the authorities said they do not know the authors of the bombing and the bomb plants, they also denied that the suspicious occurrences were the result of a destabilization plot. It is however suspicious that such bombings and attempted bombings are occurring during a state of high political tension, as it has happened in the past.

This has thrown the public into a higher state of tension. It would help if the administration itself should defuse the political tensions arising from its own acts of commission or omission, such as pushing through the cha-cha and keeping secret its political plans for 2010.

ON NO GOING BACK TO MANUAL POLLS

I know whereof I speak in pushing for automated polls and in strongly opposing reverting to manual elections next year. Surely, people must know how massive cheating in the 2004 elections had victimized not just this representation, but especially the millions of our countrymen who had pinned their hopes on me serving as their Vice President.

I have seen how vulnerable manual election is against the onslaught of election operators who had already perfected the Art of Cheating in getting their clients "elected" to public office by hook or by crook. These poll cheats under the manual system do not care if they make a mockery of all that is sacred in a democracy like ours - the voice of the people as made manifest by their votes.

I have traced the path taken by these operators in 2004, stealing myself from the shock of what I discovered, if only to out the truth and to expose to our people how cheating was done through dagdag-bawas and the use of spurious statements of votes and certificates of canvass (COCs).

There should be no going back to manual elections under any pretext. Comelec Chairman Jose Melo admitted as much when he said manual polls, as a last resort for 2010, would open the avenue once more for cheats to operate.

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