North Cotabato poll exec probed for ‘mulcting’

COTABATO CITY — The regional office of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will start investigating today the alleged "collection" by a North Cotabato municipal poll officer of P10,000 from each barangay chairman in his jurisdiction supposedly in exchange for their unlimited use of validating machines.

The action of lawyer Clarita Callar, Comelec director for Central Mindanao, was in response to a complaint from Fr. Armand Dice, parish priest of Banisilan, a remote town in North Cotabato, about the alleged mulcting by the municipal election officer.

However, Monroe Sambuwang, the acting election officer of Banisilan, denied the allegations in an interview with a radio station of the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corp. in Kidapawan City yesterday.

But Sambuwang admitted that he tried to offer such a scheme to barangay chairmen to minimize problems in transporting registrants from their villages to the town proper.

"Hindi totoo na tumangap ako ng pera sa barangay chairmen (It’s not true that I received money from barangay chairmen)," Sambuwang said.

Callar said she would mobilize all technical staffers to investigate the allegations of Dice, who belongs to North Cotabato’s influential diocesan clergy.

In a written complaint to Catholic radio station dxMS here, Dice said he has received confirmation from reliable sources in his parish that certain barangay chairmen had allegedly given money to the municipal election officer in exchange for their use of the validating machines right in their barangays.

Callar said the validating machines, mostly fielded in town centers, may be brought on a case-to-case basis to designated validation and registration sites using Comelec’s resources.

"Barangay officials can help facilitate the transport of these machines, but only on voluntary basis. We don’t ask money from them," Callar said.

There have been reports of alleged irregularities involving local officials and their barangay chairmen in the ongoing validation of voters in Central Mindanao. — John Unson