Tobacco farmers’ leader claims getting death threats

A leader of tobacco farmers on Friday urged the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) to hasten the investigation of the alleged irregularities in the construction of a convention center in Ilocos Sur after he supposedly received death threats for raising the issue.

“I now fear for my security because from the time I questioned the anomalous projects initiated by the Singsons, I [have been] receiving death threats,” Bernard Vicente, chair of the National Federation of Tobacco Farmers and Cooperatives, said in a statement.

Vicente’s group had told the PACC that the P500-million Farmers’ Convention Center in Vigan City was “not even close to 10 percent” completed, a decade after it was started in 2007. —MARLON RAMOS