By Liza Agoot
BAGUIO CITY – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) reminded anew the police and military assigned to enforce law and order in the region to continue staying neutral and focused on protecting the integrity of the election.
“To our law enforcement, always remain neutral, protect the voters, the process and each other,” lawyer Julius Torres, regional director of the Comelec-CAR said in a message to the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Wednesday.
He also reminded law enforcers to continue to maintain neutrality to enable them to perform their tasks properly without being tagged as partisan.
“As government employees, we are mandated to be apolitical, to be neutral and not to engage in partisan political activities with the government explicitly prohibiting engagement in politics of all state workers,” he said.
Torres said the region remains peaceful with less than two weeks to go before the May 12 elections.
“We are generally peaceful in the region with the province of Abra being closely monitored although no incidents were recorded for the past few days,” he said.
Torres said there are three municipalities in Abra that are under orange category while six are under yellow, but 68 municipalities are under green category.
Under Comelec’s election hot spot areas, those in yellow category are places with history of political unrest while those under orange indicates presence of armed groups.
Torres said the number of security personnel in ‘hotspot areas’ have been increased to prevent incidents of violence, a normal occurrence in the province ahead of elections.
He said a total of 24 shooting incidents have been recorded in the province from Jan. 1 to April 24 this year, five of which are politically-motivated, another five are due to personal grudge, four were caused by heated arguments and misunderstanding, one each due to land dispute and self defense, while the others are still not established so far.
In a related development, Comelec-Tabuk City, Kalinga has asked for augmentation of law enforcers with the recent incident of shooting due to tribal dispute. (PNA)
