Albayalde: 240 individuals arrested for vote-buying
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Mon, 13 May 2019 01:04:07 +0000
THE biggest challenge the Philippine National Police (PNP) is facing in this year’s midterm elections is vote-buying as it has reported the arrest of 240 individuals even before the opening of the poll precincts on Monday, PNP Chief General Oscar Albayalde said.
Based on the PNP National Election Monitoring Action Center (Nemac), said of the total, 79 were arrested as of 6 a.m. on Monday. Ten remain at large.
“We can see that vote-buying is really massive,” Albayalde said in Filipino.
He said that a lot of the reports could not be confirmed or were not true.
“There are some supporters [of a candidate] who just saw a group of people [and] they will report it as vote buying. Some supporters would just see a politician or a leader of a politician and they will report is as vote buying,” Albayalde said.
Quezon City mayoral candidate Vincent “Bingbong” Crisologo was arrested on Sunday night for obstruction of justice after he allegedly prevented police officers from entering his house by padlocking the gates, Albayalde said.
He also said that Crisologo attempted to intimidate the operatives conducting a follow-up operation on a reported vote-buying incident in the area.
340 violators of liquor ban arrested
The PNP Nemac also reported a total number of 340 violators of the liquor ban, which was implemented on May 12 and would be in effect until 11:59 p.m. of Monday.
Of the total, 337 were arrested while three remained at large.
At least 43 election-related incidents have been recorded since January 13, in which 20 were killed while 24 were injured.
Albayalde said, however, that the number was a 60 percent drop from the 2016 elections, which recorded 106 election-related incidents.
Albaylde is hopeful that the elections will “proceed smoothly and orderly.”
“Gone are the days when elections were an exercise of body count apart from the counting of votes. We must shun all forms of politically-motivated and election-related violence, including vote-buying and intimidation, to completely reform the national political culture,” he said.
A total of 169,505 police and military security personnel were deployed on the field for various election duties. ROY NARRA
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