Cordillera guns remain muzzled

BAGUIO CITY—Rival politicians who joined the May 13 elections volunteered to keep their weapons muzzled until the Oct. 28 barangay (village) polls, a police official in the Cordillera region said on Sunday.

Politicians from upland provinces like Abra and Kalinga agreed not to retrieve their licensed firearms that were submitted for police safekeeping or were muzzled by police before the May elections, “at least until after the barangay elections,” said Chief Supt. Benjamin Magalong, Cordillera police director.

The nationwide gun ban for the barangay elections took effect on Saturday, the start of the election period, but Abra never lifted the gun ban, Magalong said.

Over 400 firearms had been muzzled or under police safekeeping, he said.

Unlike other provinces, Abra is secured by a joint task force owing to its history of violence during elections, facilitated allegedly by policemen and soldiers moonlighting as security aides of politicians, according to a 2005 government fact-finding report.

However, politically motivated killings and other forms of violence dropped to just one shooting incident before the May 13 polls, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said.

In a recent interview, Abra Gov. Eustaquio Bersamin attributed the improvement in his province’s peace and order situation to the media attention and the extensive work mounted by local civic groups to campaign against violence.

Many of the muzzled weapons were processed or collected during a door-to-door inspection drive conducted by the Abra police in January.

The police processed almost 200 weapons in Abra, but officials returned more than 100 guns to their owners once these were sealed with tape and recorded.

Magalong said the police had also coordinated with the Comelec about village leaders who require closer monitoring due to history of heated rivalries.

In August, the police categorized 64 villages in six upland provinces as election watch-list areas, many of them in Abra, Apayao and Kalinga provinces. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon