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Raissa Robles

A former military spy who said he recorded President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo asking an election commissioner to ensure a victory - and then helped Mrs Arroyo escape impeachment by recanting - has re-emerged to vouch for the tapes' authenticity.

Former technical sergeant Vidal Doble, speaking on a videotape played in the Senate by opposition Senator Panfilo Lacson,  said  he had left the military  and now had no reason to hide the truth.

He claimed that his family had been threatened in 2005 after the emergence of the  'Hello Garci' tapes, so called because of the offhand greeting given to then elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano  by a woman who sounds like Mrs Arroyo.

Mr Doble said he was 'stunned' when he initially heard  the Mrs Arroyo soundalike asking Mr Garcillano for a one-million-vote margin in the May 2004 presidential polls.

Mr Doble said he was assigned to a group that was ordered to conduct electronic surveillance on, among others, Mr Garcillano.

'We were used to eavesdropping on enemies of the state. But to hear a president, we were all stunned. We all reacted,' Mr Doble claimed in the tape played during a privileged speech at the Senate on Tuesday.

Yesterday Mr Lacson said he would present Mr Doble in person before the  Senate, which agreed to hear the latter's testimony next week. Speeches and testimonies heard  before the law-making body are covered  by immunity from suit.

In response, Mrs Arroyo lashed back at the 'titans of hate who have a monopoly on the politics of destruction'.

During a meeting with village officials, Mrs Arroyo dismissed the issue, saying: 'I have a country to run. I have terrorists to fight. I have peace to win and a bright future to secure for these children.'

The Hello Garci recordings nearly brought down the Arroyo administration in June 2005.

The leaking of the tapes to the media caused 10 senior cabinet ministers to resign and Mrs Arroyo to apologise  for a 'lapse in judgment' in talking to 'a Comelec official', without naming Mr Garcillano  or explaining the nature of the lapse.

The tapes became the centrepiece of an opposition move to impeach Mrs Arroyo in Congress in 2005. But when Mr Doble recanted, saying he had been bribed to claim he made the recordings, Mrs Arroyo's  allies voted down the impeachment.

Mr Doble  said he had no choice then but to recant, because his family was being held hostage by then armed forces chief of staff General Efren Abu.  'I saw my two children and my wife detained in the basement of the quarters of General Abu,' Mr Doble  said.

He said he himself was placed  in 'restrictive custody' from June 2005  until February,  when he left the military.

Mr Doble identified the two superiors who had ordered the wiretapping as Lieutenant-Colonel  Pedro Sumayo  and Captain Frederick Rebong. He said they had also eavesdropped on the late actor Fernando Poe Jnr,  Mrs Arroyo's  presidential rival in 2004, and even one of Mrs Arroyo's aides, Michael Defensor.

Sheila Coronel of the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism had earlier suggested that Mr Garcillano was wiretapped by the Arroyo camp because they feared he might assist  Poe.

Mrs Arroyo's ally, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile,  accused  Senator Lacson of reviving the controversy to gain media  attention for another presidential run in 2010.



'Hello Garci' tapes real, says former spy