MANILA, Philippines—Alarmed by the rash of election-related violence this early, Philippine National Police Director General Jesus Verzosa on Friday ordered the immediate resolution of the attacks on candidates and their followers that have left five persons dead and eight others wounded.

This as the Nacionalista Party (NP) candidate for vice mayor in Taganaan, Surigao del Norte, who was shot in the chest on Tuesday by two men in front of his house, died Friday.

Councilor Wilbert Suanco Origenes died from “complications arising from his injury,” police said.

On Monday, a four-vehicle convoy of local candidates also belonging to the NP was ambushed on their way home from a Christmas party in Dingras, Ilocos Norte.

Barangay Chair Joen Canetert, who was running for the Dingras town council, was killed while four others in the convoy were wounded.

The next day, an official of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), a policeman and a civilian were killed in two separate attacks in Lanao del Sur.

The PNP had tagged the two Lanao provinces among the country’s “election hot spots,” along with Masbate, Abra, Nueva Ecija, Samar, Sulu, Basilan and Maguindanao.

Maguindanao, part of ARMM, was the site of the biggest massacre in Philippine political history with 57 people killed on Nov. 23 allegedly at the instigation of the Ampatuan family, the purported local warlord clan.

Verzosa instructed the regional police directors in the Ilocos, Caraga and ARMM regions to determine if the attacks on the political candidates in their respective areas of jurisdiction were related to the 2010 elections.

“(I)t is imperative for the PNP to determine politically-motivated killings in order for (us) to lay down appropriate interventions to the… elections,” Verzosa said in a statement.

He sought the public’s and politicians’ support in the PNP’s drive to ensure an orderly campaign period leading up to the elections in May.

The police, he said, “will not hesitate to aggressively respond to any form of politically motivated violence in the country.”

“The PNP will not leave any stone unturned in our operational and security plans to ensure that (the elections) will be peaceful and orderly and free from any form of intimidation.”

The NP local district chair in Taganaan, Alfonso Casurra, said the attack on the 49-year-old Origenes may have been politically motivated, noting that it came just two days after another party member was killed, referring to the Dingras incident.

Ilocos police director Chief Supt. Constante Azares, meanwhile, said various illegal firearms that may have been used in the Dingras ambush had been seized in a police operation.

“The Ilocos police will not stop until we are able to give justice to the victim’s family and put the suspect behind bars,” Azares said.

In a statement, Sen. Manny Villar, NP leader and its presidential candidate in the May 2010 polls, expressed the party’s “deepest and sincerest condolences to the family of Origines, ABC president and our candidate for vice mayor in Taganaan, Surigao del Norte.”

Also referring to the ambush in Ilocos Norte, Villar said: “We are extremely outraged by these brazen acts of violence against our members. This cowardly show of force undermines not only our democratic institutions, but also the sacred right of the people to vote.”

He urged the authorities to solve the crimes as swiftly as possible. With an Agence France-Presse report