Poll officer hurt in Basilan blast

The poll violence continues.

An election officer was wounded when unidentified men lobbed grenades at a canvassing center in Isabela City, the capital of Basilan, Wednesday night. 

Elsewhere in the country, a re-electionist councilor in Polomolok, South Cotabato was shot and critically wounded, a campaign manager of Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema survived a gun attack, and the wife of an Abra mayoral candidate was assaulted by a lone gunman in a school compound while the canvassing of votes was ongoing.

Police said two grenades were thrown at a canvassing center at the Isabela Pilot Elementary School at about 9 p.m. Wednesday, sending the canvassers, poll watchers and everyone there scampering for their safety.

One of the grenades went off outside the center, wounding Manzur Usman, a Commission on Elections (Come-lec) staffer, while the other rolled under a table but failed to explode, police said.

Usman was rushed to the provincial hospital while the canvassing was temporarily halted.

The grenade blast occurred hours after hundreds of Basilan residents staged a prayer vigil and lighted candles for a peaceful canvassing of election returns in the island-province gripped by fear due to intense political rivalries.

Since election day, two residents have been killed and eight others wounded in Basilan.

In South Cotabato, Rogelio Limos, 63, who won his re-election as councilor of Polomolok town, was closing his grocery store in Barangay Poblacion when he was shot with a caliber .45 pistol at close range Wednesday night.

Senior Superintendent Ro-bert Kiunisala, South Cotabato police director, said Limos, who belongs to the Nationalist People’s Coalition, mistook the gunman as a customer.

Limos was shot in the back, with the bullet exiting through his nape. He was still “under observation” at the Howard Hubbard Memorial Hospital.

Limos ranked fifth in the councilor race. He is on his third and last term.

In Cotabato City, Khalifa Abbas, a campaign manager of re-electionist Mayor Sema, was wounded when a lone gunman shot him in the chest with a caliber .45 pistol while he was leaving a coffee shop along a busy street yesterday.

Abbas’ attacker fled on a motorcycle.

Abbas has been one of the trusted lieutenants of Sema, secretary-general of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), since the front was still fighting the government in the 1970s.

Abbas works as a technical staffer of the city’s market administration department.

Sema said he has asked the city’s 37 barangay chairmen to help the police go after the attacker of Abbas, who is now recuperating in a hospital.

Meanwhile, in Abra, Brenda Crisologo, wife of Tineg re-electionist Mayor Edwin Crisologo, was seriously woun-ded when a poll watcher shot her inside the Holy Spirit High School in Bangued, the capital town, at around 12:20 p.m. yesterday.

Men of the Regional Mobile Group and military personnel securing the canvassing area, however, gunned down Mrs. Crisologo’s attacker, a certain Totoy Buyao, 21, after he shot it out with them.

Mrs. Crisologo was hit in the abdomen.

Police were investigating how Buyao managed to slip a handgun inside the canvassing area.

Reports said she was shot at the height of a verbal tussle between the supporters of her husband and his rivals.  – With Ramil Bajo, John Unson, Artemio Dumlao and Cecille Suerte Felipe