Press Release
March 11, 2007

PIMENTEL SAYS COMELEC SHOULD TELL PUBLIC
IF VITAL ELECTIONS DOCUMENTS WERE DESTROYED BY FIRE

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today expressed concern that important documents may have been destroyed in the fire that gutted the office of the Commission on Elections in Intramuros, Manila.

Pimentel said Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos should order a complete inventory of the documents, equipment and facilities that were burned during the five-hour-long fire to determine if vital documents were destroyed, such as those pertaining to the botched P1.3 billion poll modernization project, the procurement of supplies for the 2007 elections and the fraud-tainted 2004 presidential election.

The burning of the Comelec office raises alarms that vital evidence might have been burned. Chairman Abalos good intentions need to be proven. Clean elections are vital and necessary, he said.

Pimentel had recently sought a Senate inquiry into newspaper reports about the alleged overpricing of security paper for the official ballots to be used in the coming mid-term local and national elections.

He is also a principal complainant behind pending criminal and administrative charges against Comelec officials before the Ombudsman in connection with the anomalous purchase of 1,961 automated counting machines the contract of which was voided by the Supreme Court.

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