INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Sandra Cam protests seizure of ballot boxes by Masbate solon

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Tina Santos

MANILA, Philippines -- Erstwhile jueteng whistleblower Sandra Cam filed on Wednesday night complaints of oral defamation and grave threats against Masbate Representative Narciso Bravo.

Senior Police Officer 1 Jerry Campo of the Manila Police District General Assignment Section, said Cam reported the verbal altercation she had with the congressman and had it recorded in a police blotter.

In her complaint, Cam traded barbs with Bravo as she was trying to prevent him and his nine armed bodyguards from forcibly taking at least eight ballot boxes from the Commission on Elections warehouse on Perez St., at the corner of UN Avenue in Manila, Wednesday afternoon.

"I had no choice but to fight back and hurl invectives at him because he cursed me first," Cam told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

Cam’s lawyer Gina Serra said the ballot boxes were apparently the subject of electoral protests filed by Bravo’s wife, Marvi Bravo and Nanette Espinosa. Marvi Bravo lost to incumbent San Fernando town Mayor Helen Bunan in Masbate, while Espinosa lost to Vicente Homer Revil in the vice gubernatorial race in 2007.

Bravo reportedly questioned Cam’s authority to interfere in the matter. But Cam claimed that Bunan sought her help and asked her to prevent Bravo from taking the ballot boxes.

Bravo’s move was apparently a result of an order issued by a Masbate judge to take the ballot boxes back to Masbate. However, Cam explained that Bravo should not have hauled the ballot boxes because Espinosa had filed a motion for reconsideration at the Comelec.

According to Cam, she immediately reported the incident to Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who became in charge of the electoral protest cases when Comelec Commissioner Romeo Brawner died. Sarmiento took cognizance of Cam’s complaint but refused to issue a statement, because he was still studying the case.

It was not clear, however, how a party of interest in an electoral protest case could take into custody ballot boxes under protest and seize them from a Comelec warehouse.

According to Cam, she rushed to the Comelec warehouse on Bunan’s request and saw Bravo and his bodyguards already hauling the ballot boxes. She said the ballot boxes were loaded into a jeepney and brought to a bus terminal in Cubao.

Brawner had initially ordered the transfer of the questioned ballot boxes from Masbate to Manila for security reasons, Cam said.

Cam first broke into the public consciousness when she alleged the links of the Arroyo family to the illegal numbers game jueteng in a Senate hearing.

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