‘Garci’ admiral at printing office
seen as part of 2010 cheating plot
Malaya
January 27, 2009
SENATE minority leader Aquilino Pimentel yesterday called for a Senate inquiry into the ouster of National Printing Office (NPO) chief Enrique Agana and his replacement by retired Admiral Tirso Danga.
Agana had been accused of raping a girl, by Napoleon Bunagan Jr. of Valenzuela City who identified himself as a concerned citizen.
The mother of the alleged rape victim said no such incident took place.
The mother said the accusation against Agana was concocted by Bunagan, a Francisco Datu and a woman named Yanni.
Agana said Bunagan, owner of a printing plant, and his accomplices tried to blackmail him after he disapproved a printing contract that would have earned for them P33 million.
Without conducting an inquiry into the alleged rape, Malacañang decided to replace Agana with Danga.
“The swiftness with which the Palace removed Agana from his post and installed Rear Admiral Danga as his replacement clearly show an administration effort to put the National Printing Office under the control of a man whom it can trust despite his sullied reputation. But this only raises suspicion that this is part of a sinister agenda to manipulate the 2010 elections to keep administration forces in power,” he said.
Pimentel stressed the NPO should be headed by a person of proven integrity to prevent a repetition of irregularities in the 2004 presidential elections involving the NPO such as overprinting of ballots, election returns and other official election forms.
Pimentel said the choice of Danga is objectionable because of his alleged role in the cover-up of the massive fraud that marred the 2004 presidential elections during his stint as chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp).
Isafp operatives supposedly conducted wiretapping operations that produced the taped conversations between President Arroyo and then Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
In those conversations, the two supposedly discussed “special operations” on the rigging of results in favor of Arroyo.