2 days Ago By Bonz Magsambol, Froilan Gallardo
window.rapplerAds.displayAd( "middle-1" );window.
rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-1" );MANILA, Philippines – Virgilio Garcillano, former commissioner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and key figure in the “Hello Garci” scandal during the 2004 elections, died on Saturday, March 29. Comelec Region 10 director Renato Magbutay confirmed Garcillano’s death to Rappler via a phone call.
Magbutay said Garcillano died after collapsing in their comfort room after 8 pm, Saturday night, in their farmhouse in Barangay Imbatug, Baungon, Bukidnon. Garcillano lived with his wife, Grace, in their Imbatug farm.Magbutay said he had visited the wake of Garcillano at St.
Peter Lumbia. Lumbia is located in uptown Cagayan de Oro near Baungon.The “Hello, Garci” scandalThe “Hello Garci” scandal was a wiretapping controversy that surfaced in 2005.
It featured a conversation between a man, believed to be a disgraced election official, and a woman whose voice resembled that of then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The discussion focused on the canvassing of the 2004 election results, in which Arroyo won the presidency, with the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. as her closest rival.
According to a 2005 report by Newsbreak Magazine, Arroyo selected Garcillano for the Comelec vacancy over election lawyer Roque Bello, who was known as a “master operator” for politicians, often regarded as equally or even more skilled than Garcillano.In the 2005 Newsbreak report titled Garcillano and the Tape: The Shoe Fits, the team uncovered Garcillano’s involvement in the 2004 election scandal. They retrieved a Comelec document that confirmed Garcillano was already running the show in Mindanao before the elections.
The report highlighted that, just days before May 10, 2004, Garcillano, then Comelec’s vice chair for personnel, reshuffled election officers in the region, placing his key people in critical positions.Arroyo admitted that the voice on the “Hello Garci” tape was hers but claimed she was simply monitoring her votes and not directing Garcillano to engage in election fraud.Despite the public outcry, Arroyo did not face legal consequences for her alleged involvement in the country’s biggest electoral fraud scandal.
While she faced several corruption cases later, none were related to “Hello Garci.”Garcillano became a fugitive after the scandal broke. In 2005, Congress launched a probe into the “Hello Garci” scandal.
The following year, the opposition accused him of presenting a fake passport to prove that he had never left the country during the height of the issue. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas informed Congress that Garcillano’s passport appeared to lack authentic identification.The Singaporean government later confirmed that Garcillano arrived in their country on July 15, 2005, before leaving for London.
A 2021 Rappler article looking back at the scandal listed several headlines about the ex-commissioner in the years after the controversy. Garcillano ran and subsequently failed to win as congressman of Bukidnon in Northern Mindanao in the 2007 elections, wherein he said he was not afraid to use the “Hello, Garci” tune in his campaign. A 2011 report by Bulatlat.
com, citing then-Taguig-Pateros Representative Alan Peter Cayetano as its source, said that Garcillano “was still able to get his retirement benefits from the Comelec, amounting to P3.1 million, plus monthly pensions.” Perjury and falsification complaints were also filed against Garcillano in 2012 for for allegedly submitting a fake passport during congressional hearings in 2005 and 2006.
In 2014, Garcillano was indicted by the Ombudsman.In 2016, an Inquirer report said Garcillano was spotted at a hotel in Cagayan de Oro, where then-presidential candidates Grace Poe and Jejomar Binay were staying for the Comelec-organized debates. – Rappler.
com.
