Vidal has copies of election returns
Sept 25, 2005
Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal yesterday confirmed that he kept the sixth copy of all election returns that a Church-based poll watch group had entrusted to him for safekeeping.
(The Freeman 08/23/2005) This is the first time Vidal made public the whereabouts of the copies of the ERs given to the Cebu Citizens Involvement Maturation and Peoples Empowerment for Liberation, or C-CIMPEL, a local affiliate of the National Movement for Free Elections.
Vidal said these copies of election documents have been kept in at least 32 large boxes at the Archbishop's Palace but said he could not open them at this time.
"I have so many election returns from the administration and the opposition but I have not checked everything yet. I can't open them because I am not allowed to except when there is a court order," Vidal said.
Vidal made the statement on C-CIMPEL's copies in the wake of renewed allegations that massive electoral cheating were committed in Cebu to ensure President Gloria Arroyo's victory for a full term as the country's president.
Archdiocese media liaison officer Msgr. Achilles Dakay disclosed earlier that Vidal had also some copies of the ER's that may be sources for verification if cheating was actually committed in Cebu.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña told the media earlier this month that one of the ways to solve the issue on electoral fraud is for the Cardinal and C-CIMPEL to break their silence because they made a thorough count of the ERs with priests and nuns deployed as poll watchers.
Sometime last June, Vidal had been quoted in news reports that C-CIMPEL and its watchers "did not find any basis for the claim of massive fraud", and if ever there was then "it must have been done in a subtle way."
But Vidal and C-CIMPEL had since then decided not to issue anymore statements on the issue of electoral fraud, saying those things should not be dignified as "it will only create more confusion."
Dakay, for his part, recently said Cebuanos did not cheat in the polls but were probably "the ones being cheated." He however wished that more and more evidences would be found to bring out the truth on the matter.
Vidal has copies of election returns