MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) expects the Oct. 28 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections to be bloodier than the May 13 midterm polls.
Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. said violence related to next month’s polls actually started early with the ambush of lawyer Arsenio Reyes Jr., the election officer in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija.
Reyes was wounded when motorcycle-riding men ambushed him in Gapan City last Aug. 25. His companion escaped unhurt.
“We expect the coming elections to be more intense. It was already confirmed that the ambush is related to the election,†he noted in a forum in Manila.
According to Brillantes, Reyes’ refusal to allow a prospective candidate to transfer voter’s registration had something to do with the shooting.
“This is somehow a signal of how violent the Oct. 28 election would be. We expect rivalries to be intense. We have seen this during the voter’s registration when voters were being herded (to the registration centers),†he added.
The Comelec had recorded 1.8 million new registrants for the barangay elections while it was expecting only around 700,000 registrants.
For SK, some 3.1 million have registered while only around two million registrants were expected.
The poll body will hold a command conference with the Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines to discuss security during the elections.
These agencies would discuss the localities that should be considered as hotspots for potential for violence.
“The election is manual so we can expect many operators to come out. This will be more intense and we can also expect more protest cases to be filed by the losing candidates,†Brillantes maintained.
In the 2010 barangay and SK elections, around 200 election protest cases were received by the Comelec while in the May 2013 local and national polls, a total of only 53 cases were lodged with the agency.