PNP deploys more cops to Pangasinan

BUGALLON, Pangasinan— More policemen would be deployed to Pangasinan to ensure that elections in the province in May would be peaceful, the top police official in the Ilocos region said.

Chief Superintendent Ricardo Marquez, newly installed Ilocos police director, said a company from the regional public safety battalion had been assigned to the province, which is among the 15 provinces tagged as “areas of concern” in connection with the coming elections.

Marquez said they were also expecting another company from the Philippine National Police’s Special Action Force as augmentation.

“We want to make sure that the elections here will be peaceful so the people of Pangasinan will be able to freely express their choice without reservation,” he said on Saturday.

Special operations have started in Pangasinan last month, he said. These included the deployment of special operations task groups, review of election-related violence cases in the 2007 and 2010 elections, and a campaign to account for wanted crime suspects, especially those involved in murder or shooting incidents.

“We also talked to the candidates and urged them to hold forums to develop an atmosphere conducive to the conduct of peaceful elections,” Marquez said.

While he was aware of a request to remove Pangasinan from the list of 15 priority areas, he said there were enough bases to keep the province on the list.

“Among these is the high number of shooting incidents in the province. We also looked at the ever-changing political dynamics in the local levels and analyzed the incidents in the past elections. We [considered] all these, and Pangasinan was included in the 15 priority areas,” Marquez said.

Asked if he considered the gubernatorial race in Pangasinan as intense political rivalry, Marquez said: “It’s a continuing evaluation.”

“But in the four provinces of the Ilocos region (Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte), the level of intensity of political rivalry in Pangasinan may be at the top,” he said.

Reelectionist Gov. Amado Espino Jr., who is running under the Nationalist People’s Coalition, is facing Alaminos City Mayor Hernani Braganza, who is the candidate of the Liberal Party.

Both are facing plunder charges in the Ombudsman. Both denied involvement in the alleged wrongdoing and dismissed the complaints as the handiwork of their respective political enemies.