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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
The reports on the alleged 70,922 “spurious”
votes of Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri are mere observations of a revision
team in the protest filed by contender Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel
3rd, Zubiri’s lawyer argued Friday.
Noted election lawyer Romulo Macalintal
explained that the questionable votes will not result in the
automatic deduction of these votes from the total number of votes
that justified Zubiri’s proclamation.
The lawyer insisted that these observations of
the revision team are not conclusive at all, and would be contested
when the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) starts the protest hearing.
Macalintal gave this reaction after the tribunal
ordered on Thursday a hearing on the poll protest filed by Pimentel
against Zubiri after allegedly finding prima facie evidence of
“spurious” votes in pilot precinct areas that could affect the
results of the May 2007 senatorial elections.
The pilot areas constitute 25 percent of the
2,658 precincts involved in the protest that Pimentel considered as
the best example of electoral fraud. Zubiri, meanwhile, has already
filed a counter-protest.
The initial revision considered as spurious
70,922 of the 72,256 votes credited to Zubiri, declared by the
Commission on Elections (Comelec) as the 12th winning senator in the
May 2007 elections who has a lead of 19,292 votes over Pimentel.
“If those 70,922 ballots are fake, then they
should not be counted as there must have been substitution. If there
is substitution, then the SET should go to the certificates of
canvass,” Macalintal told The Manila Times.
He admitted that Comelec discovered that a big
number of fake ballots are stuffed in ballot boxes involved in
electoral protests, but argued that there are no findings yet that
the ballots involved in the revision were the same ones used by
actual voters.
The burden of proof still lies with Pimentel,
asserted Macalintal.
Pimentel had protested the election results in
2,658 precincts in Maguindanao, Lanao del Norte, Shariff Kabunsuan,
Basilan, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Sur and Sulu.
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