P’sinan mayor posts bail on gun tampering raps

URBIZTONDO, Pangasinan, Philippines – “I want them to file a case against me so I can answer them in court. I have nothing to hide.”

Thus said this town’s mayor, Ernesto Balolong Jr., yesterday as he returned to his office after posting bail for four counts of tampering with firearm serial numbers before the Municipal Circuit Trial Court here.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) held Balolong for a week after a raid on his house and poultry and hog farms yielded 21 firearms. 

Balolong posted bail of P60,000 for each count of tampering with firearm serial numbers and was freed Tuesday night.

The charges covered three M-16 rifles and an M-14 rifle, which Balolong said he bought as loose firearms but had them licensed under the government’s firearm amnesty program.

Balolong said he turned over all the licenses of the other firearms seized by the raiding team last Nov. 27.

Although his guns are licensed, Balolong said he was still handcuffed and held by the NBI for questioning.

He said he was initially charged with illegal possession of firearms and resisting arrest but the prosecutor dismissed this, until the case filed against him was just allegedly tampering the serial numbers of the four rifles.

He said he was told that his firearms were to be subjected to ballistic tests on suspicion that some of them were allegedly used in previous murders, including the killing of former Lingayen vice mayor Ramon Arcinue and his wife, Zorahayda, in February 2012. 

Asked about the test results, Balolong said, “I think if it is positive, I won’t be released.” 

Balolong said his firearms, all of which are still with the NBI, are not only for his personal use but also for his business, especially his hog and poultry farms, adding that the situation here is different amid recent killings.

He said he entrusts his fate to God and hopes that law enforcement agencies are not allowing themselves to be used by those trying to harass him.

“I hope they would stay fair,” he said. 

Although he did not name those supposedly behind the raid, he said their identities are of public knowledge. “They are even the ones who followed up my case in the NBI and the Department of Justice,” he said. 

The Nov. 27 raid was the second on Balolong’s house and farms. In the first raid, he proved that all his guns had proper licenses.

While at the NBI, Balolong said he was also asked about his alleged role in the Arcinue killings, but that he denied any knowledge about it and pointed to politics as the reason he was being implicated in the crime.

Pedro Roque Jr., NBI Pangasinan director, earlier told The STAR that Otto Guialaludin, the arrested suspected triggerman, had tagged Balolong as the alleged mastermind. 

But Balolong said a witness, a local policeman, attested that he was with Guialaludin in a gasoline station owned by the mayor here at the time the Arcinue couple was killed. He said Guialaludin was among his bodyguards.