With just three weeks to go before the elections, enforcement of the gun ban should now be at its toughest. Instead a local political leader of the Liberal Party in Dolores, Abra was shot dead Monday. On the same day, a radio announcer was killed in Zamboanga Sibugay. Their murders came on the heels of the ambush on the convoy of Gingoog Mayor Ruth Guingona by New People’s Army gunmen, which killed her driver and his brother.
Disarming the NPA is too much to ask of state security forces, but authorities can do better in enforcing the election gun ban. The official campaign period opened in January with the murder of Maconacon, Isabela Mayor Erlinda Domingo in Quezon City. She was running for reelection under the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Since then political violence has persisted in many parts of the country.
Some quarters shrug off the violence as a typical feature of Philippine elections, especially local races. But why does this have to be the case? Violence undermines the will of the people, which is expressed through free elections in a democracy. The use of armed force to harass people and raise campaign funds should constitute electoral sabotage. Those who engage in armed harassment also tend to commit murder to permanently eliminate political rivals and critical journalists.
The police, military and local government units are expected to implement the election gun ban. But in every electoral exercise, the state appears helpless in enforcing those laws, with local officials themselves and their police bodyguards among the most blatant violators. The country has tough gun laws, and the relatively new crime of electoral sabotage carries stiff penalties, the heaviest of which is life imprisonment. Laws are useless, however, unless enforced.