Director General Oscar Albayalde
CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga — Director General Oscar Albayalde, Philippine National Police chief, on Wednesday said he ordered 160,000 police officers to secure polling precincts, four days before the May 14 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections.
In a meeting with Central Luzon police commanders here, Albayalde told them to “maximize deployment,” following the directive of President Duterte to make the elections “safe and clean.”
He said the police needed to step up security as election-related violence since April 14 had claimed the lives of 22 candidates and civilians.
The number of fatalities may not include the killing of a village chief at Mallig town in Isabela province on Wednesday.
Bartolome Mackay, 56, was found sprawled on the road at 4:20 a.m. He was the first village chief in Isabela to be killed during the election period.
“We have called on our candidates to avoid violence, to show the world that we are civilized people,” Albayalde said.
The PNP has listed more than 7,000 election “hot spots,” among these 600 villages with intense political rivalries, he said.
Blood ties
According to Bataan Gov. Albert Garcia, the barangay and youth elections are “more complex and intense” because the candidates have blood ties, are neighbors or are friends.
Garcia joined Albayalde in witnessing a regional pledge of commitment for “secure and fair” barangay and SK elections.
Central Luzon has 6.3 million barangay voters and 2.1 million SK voters. The region has 210 hot spots.
Each of the 2,834 polling precincts in Central Luzon would be secured by a pair of police officers, said Chief Supt. Amador Corpus, the region’s police director.
He said the police had deployed 200 quick reaction teams in Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales provinces.
‘Security threats’
Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Salamat, commander of the military’s Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), said Central Luzon, the Ilocos, Cagayan Valley and the Cordillera regions had “few security threats,” so Nolcom would focus instead on the candidates’ private armies.
In the Cordillera, 79 villages have been tagged election hot spots, including 36 in Abra province, 23 in Kalinga, and 20 in Mountain Province.
In Pangasinan province, no election-related incidents had been reported so far, as candidates in 1,364 villages worked double time to woo votes with three days left before the end of the campaign season, according to Senior Supt. Ronald Lee, provincial police director.
Five villages in the towns of Calasiao, Ubiztondo, San Manuel and Sison have been included on the election watch list due to intense political rivalries and violent incidents recorded in past elections.
A former village chief in San Manuel town and a councilman in Urdaneta City were shot dead last week but Lee said investigators were still establishing if the killings were politically motivated. —Tonette Orejas, with reports from Villamor Visaya Jr., Gabriel Cardinoza and Kimberlie Quitasol