SET’s strange indecision in Pimentel-Zubiri case

The election protest filed by Koko Pimentel against Migz Zubiri is almost four years old. But even though the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) has already found Pimentel the winner by a wide margin of around 257,000 votes, it has not rendered a decision. Allowing Pimentel to sit in the Senate instead of Zubiri would have been the proper way of settling the case without prejudicing the counter-protest of Zubiri, who cannot even specify the fraud he has alleged to have been inflicted on him. His counter-protest is just a dilatory tactic and is meant just to “eat” the remaining years of the contested term. What Zubiri is contesting—35,000 votes—is not even one half of Pimentel’s lead over him.

Pimentel’s protest is backed up by documentary and testimonial evidence and his lead can no longer be overtaken in law or in fact. More so with the latest revelations of suspended ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Former Maguindanao Comelec provincial supervisor Lintang Bedol, who claim that they were the ones who produced the faked ballots which credited Zubiri with 195,000 votes. Their revelations reinforce the claims and documents that Pimentel has presented.

Why is the SET sitting idle on this case? Is it also being manipulated by Zubiri? Don’t tell us that Zubiri can manipulate them all—from the mighty and greedy politicians of Maguindanao, to the Comelec mafia, up to the SET. It’s high time that the SET freed itself from Zubiri’s tentacles lest its members become accomplices to the election fraud in Maguindanao.

—BEN RANQUE,

deputy secretary general, PDP-LABAN, Mindanao

8th Street, Nazareth, Cagayan de Oro city