EDITORIAL - Injustice

In an emotional speech yesterday, Juan Miguel Zubiri announced his resignation from the Senate, saying he wanted to end accusations that he benefited from vote rigging in the 2007 midterm elections. Zubiri, who was midway through a six-year term, said his loved ones had suffered from allegations that he was a beneficiary of vote shaving and padding or dagdag-bawas, which gave him the 12th and final Senate slot in the race. Former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol is set to tell the Senate about what he says was his role in rigging the vote in 2007 in favor of administration senatorial candidates.

Zubiri dislodged closest rival Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, whose father and namesake once lost his Senate seat through dagdag-bawas. Koko Pimentel has formally challenged Zubiri’s victory, and may not be able to take over the vacant Senate seat until the electoral protest is settled with finality by the Senate Electoral Tribunal. The SET should not prolong the agony of the concerned parties; it must settle the protest with dispatch.

The interminable wait to settle electoral disputes is an injustice to the concerned candidates, and especially to a real winner who is deprived of the right to carry out his electoral mandate. It is also an injustice to voters, who are cheated of their true choice. If the SET declares Zubiri as the real winner, it would make him a victim of injustice, forced to give up a position that he deserved, and no longer allowed to reclaim it.

The long wait for a final settlement of electoral protests is one of the greatest incentives for rigging the vote. By the time a politician is found to have cheated his way to public office, it would be near the end of his term, or even long after he has fully served it. The case of Zubiri and Pimentel should lead to a review of procedures for settling all poll protests filed with the electoral tribunals and the Comelec. As long as the system rewards cheating, there will always be unscrupulous people who will want to manipulate the vote.