CABANATUAN CITY, Philippines – Fifteen of Nueva Ecija’s 27 towns and four of its five cities have been tagged by the Philippine National Police as election hotspots.
Senior Superintendent Crisaldo Nieves, provincial police director, said their election watch list includes the cities are Cabanatuan, Gapan, Muñoz, and San Jose.
Also tagged as areas of concern are the towns of Aliaga, Bongabon, Cuyapo, Gabaldon, Gen. Natividad, Guimba, Jaen, Licab, Lupao, Quezon, Rizal, San Isidro, Talugtog, San Antonio, and Sto. Domingo.
Among the cities, only Palayan is not included in the list, and among the towns, those not included are Cabiao, Carranglan, Laur, Llanera, Nampicuan, Pantabangan, Peñaranda, San Isidro, San Leonardo, Sta. Rosa, Talavera, and Zaragoza.
Nieves said an area is deemed an election hotspot based on the following parameters: the presence of private armies, organized crime groups or other threat groups; intense political rivalries; poll-related violence; shooting incidents victimizing elected officials; and the proliferation of loose firearms.
Cabanatuan, the province’s commercial and trade center, leads the list due to the intense rivalry between re-electionist Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara and board member Emmanuel Antonio Umali, younger brother of re-electionist Gov. Aurelio Umali.
Both camps traded barbs in the run-up to the aborted Dec. 1 plebiscite to ratify Presidential Proclamation 480 converting Cabanatuan into a highly urbanized city.
The mayoral contest in Gapan is considered heated due to the rivalry between re-electionist Mayor Christian Tinio and Maricel Natividad, daughter of former three-term mayor Ernesto Natividad who has gone into hiding for his alleged involvement in the 2006 raid on a cockpit arena of a political rival whose two sons were among those killed.
In Muñoz, come-backing former three-term mayor Nestor Alvarez is facing Vice Mayor Esther Lazaro in a reprise of a brief power grab by the vice mayor who occupied city hall following a brief disappearance of Alvarez’s brother, Mayor Efren Alvarez, over a criminal case.
In the case of San Jose, it will be a rematch between re-electionist Mayor Marivic Belena and her brother-in-law, former vice mayor Mario Salvador, who lost to her in the 2010 polls.
In Palayan City, the contest between businesswoman Rianne Cuevas and come-backing former three-term mayor Pacifico Fajardo, also a former three-term congressman, is considered not as heated and politically charged.