RE: SET CASE NO. 001-07 AQUILINO PIMENTEL III VS.

JUAN MIGUEL
ZUBIRI

Section 17 of Article VI of the 1987 Constitution states in part that the

Senate and the House of Representatives shall each have an Electoral
Tribunal which shall be the sole judge of all contests relating to the election,
returns and qualifications of their respective members.

In the landmark case of Bondoc vs. Pineda in 1991, the Senate Electoral
Tribunal was created to function as a nonpartisan court although two-thirds
of its members are politicians. It is a non-political body in a sea of politicians.
As judges, the members of the tribunal must be non-partisan. They must
discharge their functions with complete detachment, impartiality, and
independence — even independence from the political party to which they
belong.

Though some critics say that SET Resolution No. 07-105 is linked to the
battle for Senate Presidency, we must reiterate that no less than the
Supreme Court said that the Electoral Commission is a body separate from
and independent of the legislature and though not a power in the
tripartite scheme of government, it is to all intents and purposes, when
acting within the limits of its authority, an independent organ, while
composed of a majority of members of the legislature it is a body
separate from and independent of the legislature.

Prescinding from these premises, I concurred with the majority view in SET
Resolution No. 07-105 without prejudice to revisiting the ruling and
setting aside said resolution should the results of the further
appreciation of the ballots confirm that it is statistically improbable
for the outcome of the elections to be overturned in favor of the
protestant or the protestee, as the case may be. While it is true that
both protestant and protestee admitted that ballots of dubious integrity were
discovered in the course of the revision proceedings in the pilot precincts, it
is noteworthy to stress that at any rate, fraud or no fraud, the verdict in
73,265 precincts may be only ascertained in due course before the Senate
Electoral Tribunal. This is consistent with the underlying purpose of an
election contest which is to establish who the actual winner in the election is.
Thus, in an election contest where what is involved is the correctness of the
number of votes of each candidate, the best and most conclusive evidence
are the ballots themselves.
Finally, the SET Resolution No. 07-105 was promulgated on June 4, 2010.
This was way before I was fielded by the Liberal Party as candidate for the
Senate Presidency. So it is unsound to conclude that I signed the SET
Resolution in order to be guaranteed of Senator Zubiri’s vote in my bid for
Senate Presidency.