Page 72 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

be issued to all persons attending the proceedings. All copies were equally valid. Each
party would receive a true copy while the three official copies were sent to the District
Returns Board, the National Returns Board, and the Electoral Tribunal, respectively.
Precinct returns began to be known some three or four hours after precincts closed, at
around eight o’clock in the evening of that unforgettable first Sunday in May. Arias
took the lead and never lost it.

As La Prensa went to press at four o’clock in the morning of May 7, Arias
was leading Barletta –according to figures obtained by the newspaper’s reporters and
journalism students hired to help them– by 10,266 votes, with 21 % of all precincts
reporting.
The Defense Forces had even more complete data. Having their own people
at each precinct and benefitting, moreover, from an excellent communications network,
they had charged hundreds of officers with the task of relaying the results as soon as
votes were counted at each of the 3,902 precincts throughout the country.

“En Pocas Palabras” reproduced the text of a memorandum addressed to the
Defense Forces in the Province of Veraguas, giving them precise instructions as to the
relaying of returns results. Public offices in the province acted as information reception
and relay stations. National guardsmen were instructed to coordinate their activities
with PRD members. La Prensa, June 8.

“By the small hours of May 7, both the General Staff and
its Commander in Chief (Noriega) knew that despite
previous frauds (electronic or otherwise), Arias had given

them a 40,000-vote drubbing. And then the frenzy
began…”. “En Pocas Palabras”, La Prensa, June 8, 1984.

Massive challenges at the District Returns Board level were part of that “frenzy”.
Thanks to the information it had on hand, supplied by its precinct workers, and
complemented by data obviously furnished by the Guard, UNADE knew exactly in
what precincts it had lost and Arias’s margin of victory. All it had to do –and did–
was to instruct its representatives at the respective District Returns Boards to challenge
the results from those precincts, thus excluding those votes from the total to be shown
in the district returns tally sheets.

Challenges were filed for the most childish and absurd reasons. Such grounds
were not envisaged under Article 290, but nevertheless the challenges were admitted
by partial Electoral Tribunal officials in the different District Returns Boards. The aim
was to cut back Arias’s lead at any cost.

For instance, the PRD representative in San Miguelito challenged in one fell
swoop the returns from 60 precincts, 20 % of that district’s total, even before the
official returns tally sheets were received at the Circuit Return Board. What arguments