SET URGED TO SPEED UP RESOLUTION OF PIMENTEL-ZUBIRI
POLL DISPUTE

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. today urged the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) to hasten the resolution of the protest filed by his son, lawyer Aquilino "Koko" III against Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri in connection with the fraud-ridden 2007 senatorial election.

"Let it not be said that election results in this country amount to nothing more than than an exercise in futility where lots of money are spent to pursue them and a lot of arguments is aired by both sides that only produce a lot of speculation as to who actually deserves to sit in the Senate as the duly-elected representative of the people," he said.

Pimentel said last week's massacre of at least 57 innocent civilians in Maguindanao by armed men identified with the Ampatuan political dynasty should prompt the authorities to finally settle the two and a half-year old electoral dispute which stemmed from the massive rigging of the results of the last senatorial election in the trouble-prone province.

He called for the investigation, arrest, prosecution and conviction of election officials, politicians and poll operators who perpetrated the wholesale "dagdag-bawas" (vote-padding and shaving) operations in Maguindanao in the 2007 senatorial and 2004 presidential elections.

Pimentel said the already-completed recount of contested votes in the polling precincts covered by Koko's protest showed that he has posted a commending lead over Migz Zubiri.

Although Zubiri has a pending petition with SET to continue with the recount in precincts covered with his counter-protest, Pimentel said "the indications are that there is no way that he may validly overcome Koko's massive edge over him as determined by the actual recount of the votes as of this date."

Describing the results of the 2007 senatorial election in Maguindanao as "the most unashamedly fraudulent" in the country's history, Pimentel said of the 205,000 votes allegedly cast in the province, Zubiri was credited with l95,823 votes -- equivalent to an "incredible, dubious and anomalous" 95 percent.

Amazingly, he said even better known opposition senatorial candidates registered zero votes from Maguindanao in that election. These candidates included Senators Benigno Aquino III, Alan Peter Cayetano, Panfilo Lacson and Antonio Trillanes and former Sen. John Osmena.

The revision of ballots supervised by the SET revealed that more than 95 percent of the questioned Maguindanao votes were fake, forged or fraudulent, according to the opposition senator from Mindanao.

Pointing out that practically half of the six-year term of the senators who were elected in 2007 is over, Pimentel said that for the sake of justice, the nine-man electoral tribunal should come out soon with its long-overdue decision on the Koko-Migz dispute.

"Let it not be said that as a people we do not care about how elections are conducted in this country or how the results of the elections are arrived at. Or that we are more concerned with the form, rather than with the substance of the electoral process," he said.

"Allowing the people to vote but without regard to the authenticity of the counting of the votes cast would make the electoral process a sham, a legally-sanctioned deceitful exercise, a thoroughly-useless machination that is designed to cover with the veneer of authority even those who obviously enter public office with utter duplicity."