Candidates pitch campaign tents inside polling center in Cavite

SAN PEDRO CITY – Political aspirants in a village in Tanza town in Cavite province put up tents displaying their names and pictures on the grounds of a school being used as polling center for the 2018 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) officials immediately ordered the dismantling of the tents after discovering them during the first hours of Election Day on Monday, May 14, 2018.

Cavite election officer Sheryl Moresca said the tents were set up inside the school grounds in Barangay (village) Biwas. She said they also found “handwritten” lists of candidates being handed out to voters.

Campaigning on Election Day is prohibited near polling precincts.

“What they’ve been doing was whenever someone asked help to locate his precinct, they would give out sheets of paper where candidates’ names were written on the back,” she said.

While no one has been arrested, Moresca said campaigners had been “warned.”

Meanwhile, Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, chief of the Cavite, Laguna, Batanagas, Rizal, Quezon (Calabarzon) police, said they had so far recorded three incidents of vote-buying.

He said one person was arrested in Calamba City, Laguna, seven in Lucena City, and Calauag in Quezon.

In Calauag, candidates were reportedly handing out envelopes that contained P200 to voters, the police said. /cbb