Pimentel won’t share campaign stage with Zubiri

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III. FILE PHOTO

Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III has written to former President Joseph Estrada to raise his “vehement objections” to the inclusion of resigned Senator Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri in the Senate ticket of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

“I am very passionate about electoral reform. There is no way, during the campaign of 2013, that I can avoid attacking election cheaters. We will be on the same stage and I will be attacking him? This is the scenario I am avoiding,” Pimentel said in his letter dated May 21, copies of which he furnished to reporters on Thursday at his office in the Senate.

Estrada, a member of the core executive committee of UNA, in turn said he was “saddened” by Pimentel’s demand that Zubiri be removed from the UNA lineup.

“I want to talk to him. It’s important that we have a complete ticket.  I hope Koko will reconsider,” Estrada told ANC news cable program late afternoon Thursday.

Estrada reminded Pimentel that under the law, Zubiri remained innocent of charges that he was involved in the massive fraud that marred the 2007 senatorial elections until proven guilty.

Besides, Estrada said, Zubiri landed in tenth place in the latest Pulse Asia survey of the public’s preference of senatorial candidates.

“It means people do not believe he was part of the fraud perpetrated by (former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo). Remember, those identified with Arroyo did not win in the last elections,” he pointed out.

Both Pimentel and Zubiri are running in the 2013 senatorial election on the UNA slate.

UNA is a newly formed coalition between Vice President Jejomar Binay’s Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan or PDP-Laban, and Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP).

Pimentel is president of PDP-Laban.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Zubiri retorted, “He sounds like a broken record with his tirades; he keeps going.”

Zubiri added, “As he said, I am a beneficiary of the cheating that happened in Maguindanao. But I am an unwilling and unknowing beneficiary, so how could I be called a cheat?”