The municipality of Pilar in Abra and the entire Misamis Occidental province were declared under the control of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) due to security concerns related to the upcoming polls, Chairman Saidamen Pangarungan announced Wednesday, May 4.
In a press conference during the send-off ceremony of security and education personnel for the May 9 elections at Camp Crame, Pangarungan explained that he decided to exercise his emergency powers to declare certain areas under Comelec control because of the safety and security concerns hounding Pilar town and Misamis Occidental.
“I received a confidential report from our regional election director and also a petition the local government of Pilar disclosing the apparent bias of the local police detachment. There were also reported threats and intimidation to some supporters of some candidates in Pilar,” Pangarungan revealed.
Because of this, the Comelec chairman recommended to the Philippine National Police to relieve the entire police detachment in Pilar, Abra.
It can be recalled that a staff of Pilar Vice Mayor Jaja Josefina Somero Disono was killed when members of the local police fired upon her van while the government official’s team was passing through a supposed Comelec checkpoint along Berona Street last March 29.
The police alleged that Disono’s team ignored the checkpoint but an investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) revealed the cops deliberately fired shots towards the vice mayor’s convoy and there was no checkpoint at the time of the shooting incident.
Meanwhile in Misamis Occidental, Pangarungan said that the decision to place it under Comelec control was unanimously decided by the Joint Security Control Center which is composed of the Comelec regional office in Northern Mindanao, the PNP regional office 10 (PRO-10), and the AFP’s 4th Infantry Division (4ID) and 1st Infantry Division (1ID).
“They were unanimous in recommending that the province of Misamis Occidental be declared under Comelec control because of their fear that election-related violence in the province spills over to other municipalities,” he added.
Once an area is declared under Comelec control, the agency “shall take immediate and direct control and supervision over all national and local officials and employees required by law to perform duties, and/or to comply with certain prohibitions relative to the conduct of the elections.”
Earlier in the day, Pangarungan witnessed the send-off ceremony of around 1,000 personnel from the Philippine National Police, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), and Department of Education (DepEd) at Camp Crame to secure the upcoming May 9 elections.
There were 18,000 other personnel from the said agencies who were also fielded in simultaneous ceremonies nationwide.