DILG: Hot spots in May polls down to 300

Interor Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, DILG spokesperson (File photo from DILG)

MANILA, Philippines — With the 2022 national and local elections barely a month away, authorities will be keeping a close eye on a fewer number of poll hot spots while going after those engaged in vote-buying.

Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said they have identified around 300 election hot spots, including 125 “red” or grave areas of concern for this year’s polls.

This is significantly fewer than the 946 election hot spots, including 546 “red” areas of concern in the 2019 elections.

“The number of our election hot spots are fewer in this year’s elections. It is really an improvement in the peace and order situation,” said the spokesperson for the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in Monday’s Laging Handa briefing.

Malaya said a “red” or grave area of concern was identified due to its history of election-related violence, the presence of private armed groups and communist rebels and incidence of heated election contests.

He said the identified areas of concern were already forwarded to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for secondary validation.

Election violence

“The Philippine National Police was directed to suppress all election-related violence, organize the regional special operations task group, which should be led by a senior official from the regional office, deploy mobile force battalions to our areas of concern, and if necessary, deploy the Special Action Force to ensure that our countrymen are safe. So the directive of Interior Secretary Eduardo Año is for focused deployment and operations of the PNP in those areas,” Malaya said.

He added that local governments were tasked not to tolerate any form of election violence, and the use of private armed groups to harass and intimidate voters.

“We will immediately deploy additional police officers if we hear such mobilizations, and if it is proven that a politician is involved, we will file the necessary charges against them,” Malaya said.

At least 16,820 police officers will be deployed for election-related duties across the country, on top of 2,584 police officers in Metro Manila who are undergoing training to fulfill election-related duties.

Meanwhile, Malaya said they were expecting the Comelec to release a resolution reactivating a task force against vote-buying by this week.

Task force vs vote-buying

“For the 2022 elections, the DILG expects that the Comelec will be approving the resolution to reconstitute and reactivate Task Force Kontra Bigay. In our meeting with the Comelec last week, they said it might be approved by Wednesday this week,” Malaya said.

The task force will be in charge of going after those engaged in vote-buying, while the Department of Justice will take the lead in prosecuting those engaged in vote-buying.

“We hope to focus on the prosecution of these people so that our countrymen will see we are very serious in stopping or fighting vote-buying in our country,” Malaya said.

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