Long before the ‘Hello, Garci’ tapes surfaced there was this 36-minute video produced and circulated in June 2004, which documented the massive electoral fraud and violence of the May 2004 elections.
The documentary was based on the examination and analysis of copies of official election returns (ERs), statement of votes (SOVs), and certificates of canvass (COCs), and affidavits and reports of election monitors and pollwatchers.
The report estimates that at least some 1.5 million votes were stolen from the opposition candidate, Fernando Poe Jr., and this was based on a partial analysis only of election returns and other official election documents. This number was apart from an estimated 3 million voters, mainly in opposition bailiwicks, who were disenfranchised.
Official gag orders prevented reports of fraud and manipulation of the vote and its counting, such as this, from being widely disseminated through the mainstream media.
Video hosting sites such as YouTube did not yet exist in 2004, so the dissemination of this documentary took on a ‘guerrilla’ approach in June 2004 through distribution of CD-ROM and VCD copies, which were limited, and through group viewings organised in homes, schools, and communities.
Frank Chavez, former solicitor-general under the Cory administration, provides the commentary.
The report’s value lies not only in documenting how the May 2004 elections were stolen systematically, but in demonstrating as well how powerful groups, institutions, and individuals from business, media, civil society, and from today's so-called independent oppositionists abetted the execution of a grand design to deliver the votes to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the May 2004 elections.
History, it is said, is re-written by victors to fit their own narratives and perspectives. But its full and honest rendering would have to contend with those accounts that contest and challenge the official and dominant discourses of rulers and their cohorts.
This video documentary is part of the record of an important moment in Philippine democratic, or rather, anti-democratic history, a moment whose critical and honest rendering has yet to fully unfold and be written.
