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| Pimentel accuses Zubiri of deception |
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| Friday, 30 July 2010 20:52 |
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LAWYER Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III yesterday accused Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri of deceiving the people by saying he is agreeable to limiting only to Metro Manila’s polling precincts the continuation of his counter-protest before the Senate Electoral Tribunal and offering to resign if the vote recount would show he was not cheated there. Pimentel pointed out that Metro Manila, particularly Quezon City and Manila, accounted for one-third of the 18,000 pilot precincts in Zubiri’s counter-protest where a recount had already been conducted. He cited the conclusion of Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, SET chairman, that “in Zubiri’s counter-protest, however, the election irregularities were merely alleged but not proven.” “He is actually giving a misleading statement. Of the 18,000 precincts where the ballot boxes were opened and the ballots examined, 6,800 were in Metro Manila, which is even larger than my 2,600 precincts (covered by Pimentel’s protest). He failed to prove anything, why would we give him a second chance?” the protestant said. Pimentel dared Zubiri to make good on his offer to quit if the recount in Metro Manila will prove him wrong that he too was a victim of electoral fraud in the premier region. “He has offered to resign. He said he is not ‘kapit-tuko’ to his position. I am asking him why not resign now?” he said. Pimentel lamented that the SET has refused to terminate the protest and to render a final ruling on the poll dispute even if it has dragged on for more than three years now. Instead, the tribunal, by a 7-2 decision issued on June 4, granted Zubiri’s motion to proceed with the recount in 75 percent or 52,380 of his counter-protested 73,265 counter-protested precincts. The pro-Zubiri ruling was rendered despite the results of the recount showing that Pimentel had gained 257,401 votes from 2,600 precincts in Maguindanao and six other Mindanao provinces. In contrast, the parallel count in the pilot 18,000 precincs of Zubiri’s counter-protest supposedly enabled him to recover only 11,948 votes. Pimentel said that based on Zubiri’s rate of vote recovery in his pilot precints, he stands to recover a maximum of only 36,000 in the remaining 75 percent of his counter-protested precincts. He said Zubiri’s projected recovery of a total of 48,000 votes are not enough to surmount his huge lead over the “illegally sitting” senator. In effect, Pimentel said the SET violated its own rules by allowing Zubiri to continue his counter-protest despite his failure to prove that he was cheated as shown by the recount in his pilot precincts. “So what is the point in going through a useless exercise to show he could possibly recover 48,000 votes when he is behind me by 257,000 votes.” As early as June, 2008, the SET had recognized that Pimentel was a victim of massive “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding and shaving) operations. As mentioned in Carpio’s dissenting opinion, the tribunal found that in six out of nine pilot municipalities in Maguindanao and Lanao del Norte covered by Pimentel’s protest, 98.15 of the ballots were found “spurious.” Citing the weakness of the electoral protest rules, Pimentel said even if the protestant will protest only one precinct, the object of the protest who is occupying the contested position can theoretically protest in the whole of the country. “Which is what Zubiri did to me by protesting in 73,000 precincts, or one third of the total number of 220,000 precincts in the country,” he said. Since it took about three years to finish the recount in Pimentel’s protested precincts and two years in Zubiri’s pilot precints, it is projected that the whole exercise will take 7.5 years more to finish. He said the SET’s handling of the case runs counter to the High Court’s admonition that “in an electoral protest, time is of the essence.” “They want the decision to be moot and academic. My worry is the historical fact that there was cheating in Maguindanao in 2004 will not be confirmed by judicial findings. That will be too painful for the nation,” he said. The seven SET members who voted in favor of the continuation of Zubiri’s counter-protest were Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco and Teresita Leonardo-De Castro and Senators Edgardo Angara, Francis Pangilinan, Loren Legarda, Lito Lapid. Only Justice Carpio and Sen. Pia Cayetano dissented from the majority ruling. Pimentel, who filed a motion for reconsideration on July, has asked for the disqualification of Angara , Legarda and Lapid on the ground that their capacity to render an objective and impartial decision the case is under a cloud of doubt. He pointed out that Zubiri belongs to the same Senate bloc of Angara , Legarda and Lapid who have vowed to vote as one in the election of the Senate president. He said this factor must have influenced their voting on the electoral protest. “Senators are politicians but as SET members, they should act like independent judges in resolving an electoral protest, which is not a political issue but a judicial case,” Pimentel said. |
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