Poll execs eyed as state witnesses are guilty–Koko

DAVAO CITY—Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III on Friday protested the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) plan to drop the electoral sabotage charges that he filed against two officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), saying they should not be cleared because of their key roles in fraud during the 2007 elections.

The DOJ has been accused of planning to let Lilian Radam, former South Cotabato election supervisor, and Yogi Martirizar, of Comelec North Cotabato, off the hook so they can become state witnesses against former Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos.

Abalos is Martirizar’s and Radam’s coaccused in an electoral sabotage case pending in a Pasay City court.

Pimentel said the election fraud case against the two Comelec lawyers should be pursued because of the key roles they played in the allegedly systematic tampering of votes in Cotabato that led to the proclamation of former senator, Juan Miguel Zubiri.

“As far as I am concerned, lawyers Lilian Suan Radam and Yogi Martirizar were the most guilty of the accused that’s why I filed the criminal charges against them,” Pimentel said in an interview here.

Radam and Martirizar had admitted in various media interviews that Abalos ordered them to alter results of elections.

Comelec Chair Sixto Brillantes and Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the poll body was not withdrawing the criminal information of electoral sabotage filed against the two, however.

“There is no resolution approved to withdraw the case against them and there is no reason to drop the case,” Sarmiento was quoted as saying. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao