With 1st term cut short, Pimentel eyes 3rd straight term in Senate

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Cheated of more than four out of the six years in his first term, recently re-elected Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III indicated on Tuesday his interest in another full term in the Senate upon the expiration of his newly won term in 2019.

Having served just a year and 10 months of the first six-year-term he supposedly received from the electorate in the 2007 senatorial elections, Pimentel expressed confidence that he could “successfully argue” that he could run anew for a Senate seat six years from now.

“It’s really a shortened term,” Pimentel said in an interview with ANC anchor Karen Davila.

“So, since it’s even less than one-third of the normal six-year term of a senator, therefore, I think, I could successfully argue that for purposes of the two-year term limit, you should not consider that one year and ten months as one term,” Pimentel said.

Pimentel acknowledged that his argument could be questioned before the Commission on Elections and would have to be decided ultimately by the Supreme Court.

“Let us say in 2019, I would still be interested in running for senator then I will file a certificate of candidacy. Let us say someone would want to question it because the theory is that I’m running for my third consecutive term then that is now the issue,” Pimentel said.

“Therefore, the Comelec will resolve the issue.  I’m sure that parties will not be satisfied. However, the Comelec decision goes so it will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court,” Pimentel added.

Pimentel said he could cite some experiences of local officials who were made to serve shortened terms and were able to run for and win three-year terms more times than the three allowed for local executives under the constitution.

“I want to study the case in Pampanga, where the legendary mayor is already in his seventh term…. Definitely there as a legal justification for circumventing or going over the term limits,” Pimentel said.

Pimentel’s first four years in the Senate were served out by former Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, the subject of Pimentel’s election protest following the 2007 elections.

Zubiri resigned in 2011 after it became apparent that the Pimentel’s protest was about to be upheld.  Zubiri, who even served as Senate majority leader, acknowledged there was fraud but stressed that he had nothing to do with it.

Pimentel, the president of the PDP-Laban, went on leave from the leadership of his party after the United Nationalist Alliance drafted Zubiri in its senatorial lineup for the 2013 elections.

UNA is a coalition made up of Vice President Jejomar Binay and Pimentel’s PDP-Laban and Manila mayor-elect Joseph Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino.

Pimentel said he would find out if Binay would finally transform UNA from being a temporary coalition into a political party.

“[If so] UNA will have its own separate identity from PDP-Laban.  If [Binay] would make UNA a regular party, then he becomes an officer of that regular party, then he will have to leave PDP-Laban because no person can be a member of two parties at the same time,” Pimentel said.

PDP-Laban was founded by Pimentel’s father and namesake, Aquilino Pimentel, Jr., during the martial law years.

Binay has acknowledged that he owed his political fortune to then President Corazon Aquino and then local government secretary Aquilino Pimentel, Jr., when the two appointed him officer-in-charge of Makati following the Edsa Revolution in 1986.

Despite running with the Liberal Party-led Team Pnoy coalition in the last elections, Pimentel said he would like to stick it out with his father’s PDP-Laban party.

“This is the party which my father established,” Pimentel said.