MikeLigalig.com

By Perfecto T. Raymundo Jr.

Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila M. De Lima on Thursday said that the Commission on Election (Comelec) does not appear keen on pinning down its former head, Benjamin Abalos Sr., on the rigging of the 2007 senatorial elections.

The DOJ is at odds with the Comelec who maintained that former South Cotabato election supervisor Atty. Lilian Radam and former North Cotabato election supervisor Atty. Yogi Martirizar be prosecuted for electoral sabotage.

Both Radam and Martirizar are witnesses against Abalos that he allegedly masterminded the election rigging in the 2007 senatorial elections in Mindanao.

"These people are pointing straight to former Comelec chairman (Benjamin) Abalos. This is a prosecutorial discretion. The DOJ believes that it is important that we pin down the mastermind and to us Abalos is the bigger fish," De Lima said.

"We believe that for the Comelec, it is okay that Abalos get off the hook as long as people like Radam and Martirizar can be prosecuted," De Lima added.

In a hearing before the Pasay City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 117, the DOJ prosecutors submitted a motion to discharge Atty. Lilian Radam despite disapproval from the Comelec prosecutors.

The Comelec prosecutors have also submitted in court a Comelec en banc resolution insisting that Radam be prosecuted for her part in allegedly rigging the election results in 2007.

Aside from Radam, the Comelec is also against the dropping of electoral sabotage case against Martirizar.

Abalos, the then Comelec chairman in 2007, ordered that both Radam and Martirizar be charged with administrative case due to their alleged involvement in the 2007 election irregularities.

The decision of Abalos was then upheld by his successor, former Comelec Chair Jose Melo.

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Both Mindanao poll officials were charged by Abalos and his commission of having committed electoral fraud in the 2007 elections. The succeeding commission led by Jose Melo pursued the case against the two, who went into hiding to avoid prosecution.

But they surfaced upon De Lima’s urging to implicate Abalos as the mastermind of the poll fraud they committed; De Lima, meanwhile, has insisted that the charges against them be dismissed because they now qualified as state witnesses. As the original complainant in the 2007 cheating case filed against Radam and Martirizar, Senator Koko Pimentel, said, the two accused Comelec officials cannot be absolved since they were the “most guilty” in the case even if they suddenly discovered (after not having said a word about it all these years that they have been in hiding) that Abalos ordered them to cheat.

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