Recently in Lintang Bedol Category

By Beverly T. Natividad Inquirer MANILA, Philippines--If the police canât do it, perhaps the citizenry can. Now considered as a âfugitive from justice," Maguindanao election supervisor Li ntang Bedol is now being offered for citizen arrest. As Bedol continued to evade an arrest warrant issued against him, Commission on Elections Acting Chairman Resurreccion Borra cited on Monday the right and the power of every citizen to arrest the poll supervisor on site and bring him to the nearest local police. âAny arrest is welcome for that matter as long as heâs incarcerated,â said Borr a in an interview. Despite media reports that Bedol has been able to dodge arrest in Maguindanao, Borra said as of Monday, the Comelec was awaiting a formal report from Chief Su pt. Joel R. Goltiao, the Philippine National Police (PNP) director of ARMM, reg arding the matter. âHe is a professional soldier so he has to make a professional report to tell u s of his compliance or non-compliance with Bedolâs arrest order,â said Borra. The ARMM police chief, he said, has not contacted any of the poll body commissi oners to apprise them of the situation. He added the Comelec needed Goltiaoâs o fficial report on Bedol to have a formal basis in evaluating and acting on the situation. Before government offices took a break for the long "All Saintsâ" weekend, the Comelec sent a resolution compelling Goltiao to carry out the warrant of arrest against Bedol issued last Oct. 23. The Comelec felt that Goltiao was âdilly-dallyingâ in his implementation of the arrest warrant. Talking to the media last Saturday, Goltiao announced that the ARMM police was unable to track down Bedol in Maguindanao. The warrant of arrest against Bedol was based on the Comelecâs August 2007 ruli ng which found him guilty of indirect contempt. His conviction was based, among others, on his failure to appear before the Comelec despite repeated summons t o answer questions on alleged cheating activities in Maguindanao. The Comelec is still set to file new charges against Bedol for various violatio ns of the Civil Service law.

By Dona Pazzibugan Inquirer MANILA, Philippines--Former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol will soon be charged with electoral sabotage for losing the municipal election resul ts in the province during the May senatorial elections. Resurreccion Borra, who took over as acting Commission on Elections chairman fo llowing Benjamin Abalos Sr.'s resignation, told a Senate budget hearing last we ek that the poll body would pursue filing criminal charges against Bedol. Borra and Commissioners Nicodemo Ferrer, Florentino Tuason and Romeo Brawner ap peared before Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, chairman of the Senate finance commit tee and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, to appeal for no further cuts to the Comelec' s proposed P4.3 billion-budget for next year. Comelec had originally asked for an P8.6 billion-budget for 2008, but Malacaña ng cut this in half to P4.3 billion as the final proposal to be submitted to Co ngress. This includes the proposed P267-million budget for the Autonomous Region of Mus lim Mindanao (ARMM) election in 2008. Borra mentioned Bedol's case when questioned what the Comelec has done against erring election officers. "He has a pending case on electoral sabotage. The investigation is ongoing for criminal prosecution," said Borra, adding that the result of the preliminary in vestigation would be released "soon." The Comelec under Abalos had come under fire from poll watchdog groups for the poll body's kid glove treatment of Bedol, who failed to produce the municipal c ertificates of canvass of the senatorial elections from Maguindanao to the Come lec office in Manila. Bedol was eventually cited for indirect contempt for snubbing Comelec hearings and was sentenced to six months in jail and fined P1,000. But he spent only one night at the Comelec's law department before he was released on a P15,000 bail . Opposition senatorial candidate Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III filed an electoral protest before the Senate Electoral Tribunal against administration candidate Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, mainly contesting the inclusion of the Maguindanao vot es. The Comelec observed that Maguindanao produced "statistically improbable" resul ts since 19 out of 37 senatorial candidates got zero votes while the administra tion Team Unity slate registered a landslide victory. After the recanvassing of the results from Maguindanao and a handful of other m unicipalities in the ARMM, Zubiri dislodged Pimentel from the 12th slot. In an interview after the hearing, Borra said the preliminary investigation rep ort recommending the filing of electoral sabotage charges against Bedol would b e out soon. He said the Comelec's law department would submit the report to Ferrer, who was put in charge of the Maguindanao recanvassing (after Commissioner Rene Sarmien to begged off for health reasons). Borra said Ferrer would draft the ruling for the filing of an electoral sabotag e case against Bedol for "electoral offenses, fraud, anomalies and infidelity i n the custody of election documents." Borra refused to comment on how the finding on Bedol's culpability would affect Pimentel's electoral protest.