Koko Pimentel asks SET to proclaim him senator

MANILA — Lawyer Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel has asked the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) to dismiss the counter-protest of Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri and to immediately proclaim him as the 12th winning candidate in the 2007 senatorial election.

Pimentel, through his father and counsel former senator Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., noted that Zubiri had already ordered his revisors not to report to the SET revision proceedings for an indefinite period of time starting July 19, 2011.

This, he said, “obviously points to his abandonment of his counter-protest” and “unmistakably sends the unequivocal message that Zubiri has seen the futility of pursuing his evidently contrived counter-protest.”

At the same time, however, Pimentel warned that “unchallenged, Zubiri’s act, in effect, removes the control of the Electoral Tribunal over the case at bar as it superciliously freezes the proceedings for “an indefinite period starting July 19, 2011.”

Pimentel pointed out that “unrebutted, the Zubiri ploy will certainly unnecessarily hold in abeyance the final and prompt disposition” of his meritorious protest and “will ironically and maliciously benefit Zubiri himself as he is the person unlawfully occupying the contested position.”