The report also recommended that officials who helped former Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano escape when the "Hello Garci" scandal broke out in June last year be fired.

North Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Talino Santos, chairwoman of the House Committee on Public Information, said they will give the members of the committees five days to file their comments on the report together with all the necessary attachments before submitting it to the House Committee on Rules for its inclusion in the order of business.

Once calendared, Santos said the joint committees’ report will then be reported out in plenary.

Besides Santos’s committee, the other House panels that investigated the "Hello Garci" controversy were the Committees on Public Order and Safety, on Information Communications Technology, on National Defense and Security, and on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms.

The 19-page draft report branded the opposition as "destabilizers". It said lawyer Alan Paguia, who claimed to have released the 32-minute compact disc version taken from portions of the original tapes sent to opposition leader Francisco Tatad, "has a link with the opposition group, being a former lawyer of former President Estrada."

The report said it is "difficult to escape the conclusion that these so-called wiretap tapes, whether genuine in whole or in part, or completely fabricated, could have just materialized out of thin air and fallen fortuitously on the laps of the persons who brought them to public attention."

"Indeed, there is compelling reason to believe that, if not their production, then certainly their acquisition and subsequent publication were actively sought and were components of a plan involving several persons and considerable financial resources, with the aim of embarassing the President into leaving office or, failing that, toppling government by the political mass action generated by the scandal," the report said.

The report nevertheless scored the administration for its failure to shed light on the wiretap incident.

"While it is unfair if not impossible to require proof of a negative — to wit, that the alleged conversations in the so-called Garci tapes did not take place -on the contrary, the President confessed and apologized that conversations, not necessarily the same, took place between herself and a Comelec official — Malacañang was clearly at an utter loss to explain the tapes and, on at least one occasion, attempted a cover-up," the report stated.

It cited the stonewalling of officials in answering questions and the inconsistencies in the statements of Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, who, in his June 6, 2005 press conference presented two tapes — one which he said is the spliced version and the other the "original" tape which he said contained the voice of a certain Lakas party officer named "Gary" whom the President was conversing with in the tapes.

"This only raised more issues and answered none; for what was he (Bunye) doing with a tampered tape and what did he mean that one of the tapes was original? That it contained taped conversations with the President? He would later deny it," the report said.

It added: "Throughout the hearings, no witness from the administration made a single contribution to arriving at the truth. No sincere cooperation was ever extended by the administration to the congressional inquiry."

Garcillano was believed to be the election official in the tape talking to President Arroyo allegedly about the rigging of the May 2004 elections in favor of the Chief Executive.

He completely ignored the first six months of the wiretap hearing and went into hiding highlighted by reports that a certain "Virgilio Garcillano" had arrived in Singapore on July 14, 2005 and departed for London and subsequently to other countries like Brazil and Malaysia.

When he appeared for the first time before the five committees, Garcillano consistently maintained that he had never left the country and even submitted two passports to prove this claim.

He, however, admitted having spoken to President Arroyo once about the latter’s inquiry on her dwindling lead over the late presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. but avoided questions pertaining to the contents of the Garci tapes, invoking the anti-wiretapping law.

The report also recommended the "comprehensive study and review" of Republic Act 4200 or the Anti-Wiretapping Law, and the House defense panel’s exercise of its "oversight powers" on managing intelligence information, which included sanctions against T/Sgt. Vidal Doble.

It also recommended the issuance of a warrant against former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong, who, like Garcillano, should likewise be "cited for contempt" for rejecting congressional summons.

Ong claims to have in his possession the so-called "mother of all tapes" which were allegedly wiretapped by Doble.