Teachers probed for declaring ‘poll failure’ in Abra precinct

REPLACEMENT Police officers from Abra province, including one in this photo taken on Election Day onMonday, arrive in Barangay Lapat-Balantay, Tineg, to replace teachers who backed out from
poll duties for the barangay and youth elections following a gun firing incident just meters from the polling precinct at 8 a.m. —ABRA POLICE PHOTO

BAGUIO CITY — The Department of Education has placed under investigation three Abra teachers who manned a remote polling precinct in Tineg town for declaring a “failure of elections” shortly after a gun was discharged near their school on Monday during the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

Abra Election Supervisor Mae Richelle Belmes said in a briefing late Monday that the teachers also refused to turn over the precinct to policemen deployed to Tineg’s Barangay Lapat-Balantay and had sealed all poll materials and equipment instead.

Belmes said police officers, who make up a Special Electoral Board (SEB), were dispatched as the teachers’ replacement after her office received word that the electoral board of inspectors there had backed out because of the shooting incident.

The teachers were asked to explain their actions, although they eventually heeded a Commission on Elections (Comelec) order and proceeded with the elections in Lapat-Balantay at 2 p.m., Belmes said.

“They (teachers) did not have the authority to declare a failure of elections. Only the Comelec has that power,” she said.

Lapat-Balantay is a six-hour hike from the Tineg town hall, so the SEB had to be flown there in a helicopter. Tineg is a 4-hour drive from the capital town Bangued.

Army soldiers augmenting security in Abra were the first responders when a caliber.45 pistol was fired about 500 meters from the back of an elementary school at 8:30 a.m. “possibly to cause a commotion,” said Army Col. Ferdinand dela Cruz, commander of the 501st Infantry Brigade based in Cagayan Valley.

Except for personnel assigned to protect a voting precinct, the police and soldiers tasked with securing the area must stay a few meters away from poll centers.

The man who fired the shots remains at large, Dela Cruz said at the briefing.

Concealed weapon

A video circulating online showed people scrambling out of a polling precinct to confront an unidentified man they accused of concealing a weapon.

Belmes said politicians were also discovered lingering near voting centers in Abra and were told to leave.

That incident was classified as a “suspected election-related incident,” said Police Brig. Gen. David Peredo, Cordillera police director, at a separate post-election press briefing on Monday at Camp Bado Dangwa in Benguet province.

But he said elections in the mountainous Cordillera were peaceful despite the shooting incident in Lapat-Balantay. INQ