MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) A poll watchdog urged candidates, on Tuesday, to sign a pact pledging not to use violence to gain votes at the start of the campaign season as it feared more election-related killings and other acts of violence during the campaign.
Bantay Eleksyon (Election Watch), a consortium of election monitoring groups, said in a statement, ?Election contenders should be required to sign a compact vowing not to resort to violent means in seeking public office in their respective areas.?
Bantay Eleksyon Convenor Ramon Casiple warned that politicians would resort to intimidating and harassing voters because they realized it would no longer be easy to cheat the automation elections in May.
?There will be more vote buying and vote denial operations. It is possible that the killings would increase,? he said in an interview.
Casiple noted that some officials in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, a perennial hotspot considered to be the country?s cheating capital, were amenable to the idea of signing a covenant for peaceful polls.
He added that the Comelec should ?pro-actively promote? peace compacts in election hotspots.
Bantay Eleksyon, in its report on Tuesday, said it recorded 36 other election-related killings since January 2009 on top of the Nov. 23 Maguindanao massacre, where 57 people were killed.
?Most of the victims are either leaders/ supporters of candidates or are candidates themselves,? Bantay Eleksyon said.
Bantay Eleksyon said the Comelec and law enforcement officials should intensify its campaign against private armed groups controlled by local kingpins to harass their opponents and the voters.
?To effectively do this, the PNP and the AFP should start cleaning its own backyard by replacing commanders or head officers assigned to areas considered Election Watchlist Areas,? the group said.
To curb the rise of election-related violence in the campaign season, the Comelec has ordered a total gun ban nationwide since Jan. 10. Under the law, only uniformed policemen, military, and accredited government authorities are allowed to carry and transport firearms during the election period.
Commissioner Lucenito Tagle, who heads the gun ban committee, said four provinces have been placed on the Comelec watchlist so far, namely Maguindanao, Masbate, Laguna and Abra.
Initially, Abra was not part of the watchlist, but the local leaders there violated the peace pact they signed. The Comelec has proposed early voting in the hotspot provinces.
In a related development, the Comelec turned over on Tuesday the source code for the election voting machines to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for safekeeping. The compact disc of the source code was placed inside the BSP vault.
The source code is the software or handwritten instructions on how the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines will operate.
?Hopefully with this source code, the lab test, field test and mock elections, we are on our way to poll automation,? said commissioner Rene Sarmiento.
