Aquilino Pimentel calls for Zubiri’s resignation

MANILA, Philippines—Former senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. on Thursday asked Seator. Miguel “Migz” Zubiri to resign in view of the admission of suspended Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan that the 2007 senatorial elections in Maguindanao was rigged to favor the latter.

Pimentel, whose son, Aquilino “Koko” III, filed an election protest against Zubiri for alleged electoral fraud, said the testimony of Ampatuan and Lintang Bedol, a former Maguindanao elections supervisor of the Commission on Elections, on elections boosted his claim that Koko had been cheated.

Pimentel reminded Zubiri of his earlier promise not to cling to power if allegations of election cheating on his part could be proven.

“Migz Zubiri should resign because it looks like he is the personification of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in this country,” Pimentel said, referring to a major character in a popular short novel who suffered dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as “split personality.”

“Migs Zubiri is Dr. Jekyll as a non-politician but when he becomes a politician, he is poisoned by political power, the lust for power and he becomes Mr. Hyde and therefore he should save the Filipino people from that anguish, from determining which character is being played by Mr. Zubiri now or tomorrow,” Pimentel stressed.

Ampatuan, who is offering to be a state witness in the Maguindanao massacre case in which he is a co-accused, said in his still unsigned affidavit that it was former president and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who orchestrated cheating in the 2007 senatorial elections.

On the other hand, Bedol, who surfaced after disappearing four years ago, claimed that former Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. had ordered him to give zero votes to then opposition senatorial candidates Benigno Aquino III, Panfilo Lacson and Alan Peter Cayetano.