“Without admitting any fault and with my vehement denial of the alleged electoral fraud hurled against me, I am submitting my resignation as a duly elected senator,” Juan Miguel Zubiri said in a speech in the Senate.
Zubiri, an ally of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, won the 12th and last Senate seat in 2007 midterm elections by a slim margin of about 18,000 votes over his closest rival, lawyer Aquilino Pimentel III.
Pimentel has protested Zubiri’s victory, saying several poll officials attested to fake ballots being used in the polls.
The Senate Electoral Tribunal is investigating the protest filed by Pimentel, the son of former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
Two witnesses — an election supervisor and a former governor of an autonomous Muslim region — have alleged that Arroyo and her husband ordered the rigging of the 2007 senatorial elections to favor administration candidates like Zubiri.
Arroyo, now a congresswoman, has denied giving orders to cheat in the polls.
President Benigno Aquino III’s spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, welcomed Zubiri’s decision to relinquish his Senate post, saying it “represents a way forward to start healing the wounds of the past.”
