By Veronica Uy, Thea Alberto
INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines–Despite several incidents of election-related violence and failure of elections in some areas, the barangay (village) and Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council) elections were generally peaceful, poll and police officials said Monday.
Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon Jr. said there were no major occurrences recorded in most of the 42,000 villages nationwide, as he called the elections the most peaceful in recent years.
“The 2007 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections will probably go down in history as the most peaceful and widely participated electoral exercise in recent years,” said Razon.
Commission on Elections spokesman James Jimenez attributed the peaceful conduct of the polls to more attentive coverage from the media, the high visibility of police officers, and candidates’ lack of money.
Acting Comelec Chairman Resurreccion Borra said a total of 315 cases of election-related violence have been reported to their office and were being verified. He said these incidents included fistfights and did not exclusively involve firearms.
Of this number, taken from the election period from September 29 up to 1 p.m. Monday, about 40 resulted in deaths.
The PNP’s count, said Razon, was 48 incidents of election-related violence –25 resulting in death and 28 in injuries — from September 29 to October 29 in 42,000 villages around the country, compared to 159 incidents in 2002.
Razon said that from 7 a.m. to the close of polling precincts at 3 p.m., there were only seven violent incident, including the killing of a village chief in Basilan and his companion.
The latest PNP tally showed that five of those killed were candidates for village chief while two were running for village councilor. Seven of those killed were incumbent village officials. Four of those wounded were village chief candidates, it added.
But Commissioner Rene Sarmiento and Chief Superintendent Silverio Alarcio, head of the Directorate for Operations, agreed that their figures were lower compared to the 158 or 159 election-related deaths in the barangay polls in 2002.
“This is because 30 percent of the cases in the 2002 elections happened on Election Day itself,” said Alarcio.
But despite the generally peaceful assessment, this year’s elections was not without its share of irregularities, with failure of elections being declared in some areas, poll and police officials said.
Failure of elections was declared in the provinces of Sulu, Lanao, and Masbate, and in Pasay City, Comelec officials said.
All in all, Chief Superintendent Silverio Alarcio, chief of the directorate for operations, said failure of elections was declared in 16 Lanao del Sur villages, seven in Sultan Dumalungdong town and nine in Luraba Kaugnayan.
In Sulu City, failure of elections was declared in the villages of Kalinggalang Kalwang, Panddan, and Pang. Problems were also recorded in all barangay of Panglima Estino were also named, said Alarcio.
In Shariff Kabunsuan, failure of elections was declared in Barangay Kidama, he added.
Quoting lawyer Julie Vidzfar, Sulu election supervisor, Sarmiento said there were no elections in the whole town of Panglima Estina, after all members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) failed to report; Sunugan and Panabuan villages in the town of Indanan, after the Department of Interior and Local Government refused to release ballot boxes; Tumtangis, Lambayong, and Sasak villages in the town of Indanan, after the BEIs delivered the official ballots to the wrong polling precincts; Barangay Tagbak, still in Indanan, after the BEIs and the military stopped voting due to violence; Barangay Liubud Pantao in the town of Talipao, where a police officer was gunned down; and in Barangay Tulayan, Capual, Angilan, and Lahing-Lahing in Luuk town, where all BEI members failed to report for work.
Sarmiento supervised the elections in Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Sulu province
Borra, commissioner-in-charge of Metro Manila, Western and Eastern Visayas, and Lanao Del Norte, noted an upsurge of irregularities in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“As in many places in ARMM,” Borra said that in Marawi City the election officer and the municipal treasurer were reported missing, causing the non-distribution of election paraphernalia in the area.
Borra said he ordered the field lawyer to arrest the two and to appoint the election assistant as the election officer to handle the distribution of the election materials.
“As of 12 noon, the elections have started,” he said.
In Dumalondong, also in Lanao Del Norte, Borra said two groups had been firing at each other, causing even the military and the BEI members to withdraw from the area.
Borra also noted the delayed start of voting in Marantao, and the absence of BEIs in some places in Masiu town.
In Metro Manila, Borra said voting started late in Taguig where the BEIs were harassed while some Pasay voters were delisted, causing the BEIs to temporarily stop the voting after a mob had started to form.
In Murcia town, Negros Occidental, Borra said two candidates had a shooting duel. Although neither one was hit, a stray bullet hit a passing motorcycle rider although he survived because the bullet hit his helmet.
In Cebu City, there was a reported lack of ballots for the SK elections.
Sarmiento said except for the relief of the chief of police of Dingras, Ilocos Norte, elections in Regions 1 and 2 were generally peaceful with no reports of delays or violence.
It was not the same however for Nueva Ecija where a fire at 4 a.m. was reported in six classrooms in Pantabangan and a fistfight was reported in Bongabon, Sarmiento said.
Sarmiento said that in Region 9, the BEIs in Barangay Tikala in Zamboanga Del Sur were fired upon by unknown groups.
Unlike the May elections, May when Abra was on the list of election hot spots, Commissioner Romeo Brawner said it had been peaceful in the province except for one incident of indiscriminate firing in Bangued and the ambush of a candidate, where the suspect had been arrested.
Lack of ballots was the problem in the Kalinga and Apayao provinces, said Brawner. This was resolved by using emergency ballots duly authenticated by the local Comelec officials and the local treasurers, he said.
In Tawi-Tawi, rains and rough seas delayed the distribution of election materials.
Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer, in charge of Northern Mindanao, Caraga, and Basilan province, said there were lots of problems, especially in Basilan, where voting was delayed because of the exclusion of names on the voters’ list.
Ferrer, also in charge of the gun ban, said he would go after a gun dealer in San Carlos City, Pangasinan, who had a fake exemption. He promised to personally deal with the recidivist, who was caught last May for a similar offense.
Razon has placed the 120,000-strong PNP on full alert to guard against fraud and violence.
More than a million candidates are vying for nearly 672,000 posts in 42,000 barangay. Elected to three-year terms, they fill grass-roots posts in the country of 89 million people that range from overseeing garbage collection to weeding out suspected insurgents in their neighborhoods.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo voted in her hometown in Pampanga province, north of Manila, waving and smiling to a small crowd.
Her ousted predecessor, Joseph Estrada, whom she pardoned last week after his plunder conviction, voted in a suburban Manila school for the first time since regaining his freedom.
Razon said troops were helping police secure the balloting in about 4,500 villages considered security hotspots due to the presence of communist or Muslim guerrillas or a history of intense political rivalries.
Police were concerned that communist guerrillas could use force to ensure the victory of sympathetic candidates, Razon said.
“Our intelligence assessment indicates a massive effort … to field sympathetic candidates in the elections in order for the movement to regain lost ground,” Razon said in a statement Sunday.
He also said the PNP will remain on full alert, anticipating that the counting and proclamation of the winning candidates will be more crucial.
“We are still on full alert to be able to maintain the situation,” said Razon. “This is the phase that we guard the counting process, we guard Comelec officials, elections returns and safeguard election paraphernalia.”
Ahead of the voting, communist guerrillas abducted a candidate for village leader in Basey town in the central province of Samar. Elizabeth Gutierrez, who was kidnapped Wednesday, was running against a relative of a rebel commander, police said.
A former rebel aspiring to become a village head was killed by suspected communist gunmen last Monday in Villareal town, also in Samar, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) southeast of Manila, police said.
Arroyo has repeatedly said she wants to end the communist rebellion — one of Asia’s longest — by 2010, when her term ends. The 6,200-strong rebels have been fighting for a Marxist state for 39 years and have stepped up raids on police and military outposts as well as commercial establishments in recent months. With a report from Associated Press
