“I am not in favor of a coup,” Cojuangco said in an exclusive taped interview Monday with Punto during his inspection of two proposed sites in this freeport where the Rizal Memorial Stadium could be transferred.
Cojuangco said he also did not favor just waiting for the term of the President to end only about a year and a half from now, as this would allegedly pave the way for the conduct of yet another fraudulent elections in 2016.
“Did you know that eight million votes all of a sudden disappeared in the 2013 elections? Did you know that in over half of our precincts, between 80 and 100 percent of registered voters cast their votes?” he asked.
He noted historical patterns showing that only about 50 to 70 percent of registered voters vote during elections.
Allowing the President to finish his term without any significant effort to probe electoral fraud using Smartmatic precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines would pave the way anew for another such fraud, he said.
“Why doesn’t he look into this (electoral fraud), that’s what I’m saying. They want an election that is already rigged and fixed,” Cojuangco added.
He noted that “a lot of these elected officials (who won in the 2013 polls) should not be sitting down legally.”
Cojuangco is the younger brother of the President’s mother, the late Pres. Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.
Asked whether he would support the President to the end of his term if measures are adopted to ensure credible elections in 2016, he replied, “Sure.”
In December last year before the retirement of Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Sixto Brillantes, the polls body issued Comelec Resolution 9922 awarding up to P1.2 billion ($27.2 million) worth of contract to Smartmatic-TIM for diagnostics and other maintenance works on PCOS machines.
An election watchdog called AES Watch questioned the amount of the contract, the lack of proper bidding, the seeming favoritism of the foreign- controlled and much-criticized Smartmatic, and the timing of passing the resolution.
Cojuangco said, however, he did not find the Smartmatic firm credible, noting that the PCOS machines being used by the Comelec were manufactued in Venezuela where elections last year were reportedly fraudulent. “The same thing happened here in 2013,” he said.
He urged the President to also dialogue with sectors outside of “persons surrounding him, so he can have two or more opinions.”
Cojuangco said that “if we don’t have free elections, then democracy is dead. All the sacrifices of Ninoy, all those who died for democracy would be useless.”
Stressing he did not favor a coup d’etat, Cojuangco urged another People Power. “We did it twice before, so why not?” he asked.
Asked who would lead the country in case another People Power revolution succeeds, Cojuangco lamented “our problem of looking for only one person.”
“We can look at many persons that’s why we want a parliamentary system of government instead of presidential. And then we can establish as new Constitution,” he said.
Cojuangco, however, denied being a member of the National Transformation Council (NTC) whose leaders include Catholic bishops demanding the resignation of the President, even before the Mamasapano tragedy that killed 44 policemen from Special Action Force.
Earlier, Cojuangco’s wife former Tarlac Gov. Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco also cited “evidence” of electoral fraud in the 2013 automated elections when she lost in her senatorial bid under the banner of United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
An election watchdog Isang Bayan, Isang Boto, which she heads, reportedly made a nationwide study which allegedly showed a 60-30-10 voting pattern was consistent with the results, with Team PNoy candidates getting 60 percent of the total votes cast, the opposition UNA bets getting 30 percent and the rest of the independent bets sharing the 10 percent.
Mrs. Cojuangco said the administration candidates were “digitally elected while real voters were disenfranchised.”
She cited reports that two officials whom she did not identify later asked the President for a P30 million fund to cover up the electoral mess.
