DAGUPAN CITY – The Pangasinan provincial police has put 12 towns and three cities under Comelec watch list during the May 2010 elections because of intense political rivalry and election-related incidents in the areas in the past two elections.
Sr. Supt. Percival Barba, Pangasinan provincial director, said under watch list are the cities of San Carlos, Dagupan and Alaminos, and the towns of San Manuel,Tayug, Malasiqui, San Nicolas, Basista, Binalonan, Natividad, Pozorrubio,
Rosales, Sual, San Quintin and Bolinao.
Barba said the police have also identified six private armed groups in different towns of the province – four of them in the watch list and two in other towns which he did not identify.
“If we will include the presence of PAG as basis, there will be 17 local government units that should be under election watch list,” he told the Inquirer in a telephone interview.
Barba refused to identify the towns with PAG, saying “manghuli na lang kami (we will just
apprehend).”
He said some town mayors agreed with having their towns under Comelec control citing Rosales Mayor Ricardo Revita whom he quoted as saying “it was good because the town will be getting special attention.”
San Manuel Mayor Salvador Perez said he had no problem with his town being under Comelec control, saying there was nothing to hide during the election. His aide Nicanor Laroya Jr. was shot to dead in Binalonan last January 25, but “the case was not election-related because it happened in another town.”
But Alaminos City Mayor Hernani Braganza said he will ask the Comelec the basis for inclusion of the city under watch list.
“It is unfair. On what grounds are they putting us under watch list? Do they (police) know something we do not know? Are there reports of armed groups?” he said.
He added that he had been in public service in the last 20 years and had been voting in the city ever since he started to vote and “It is only now that (the city) will be called a hot spot.”
Braganza added that some walls in the city painted with the message “ Mabuhay ang CPP-NPA-NDF” as if there was a scenario being created to put the city under Comelec control.
The municipal trial court has excluded at least 57 names from the list of voters in seven villages of the city.
In several orders, MTC Presiding Judge Borromeo Bustamante said since the 57 persons could not be found in their supposed addresses by the court’s sheriff, the petition to remove them from the list was granted.
Bustamante directed the election registration board to exclude the 57 names in the lists of the voters who are supposedly from the villages of Palamis, San Jose , Cayucay, Magsaysay, Lucap , Victoria and Telbang.