MikeLigalig.com

By Sunday Post

BOHOL Gov. Erico Aumentado has launched a crusade for clean, peaceful and orderly elections, installing Interior and Local Government Provincial Director Rustica Mascariñas and Provincial Election Supervisor Eliseo Labaria as co-chairpersons of the ad hoc body.

  As chair of the Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC), he steered it into passing a resolution creating the body and naming its executive committee officers and members.

  He said Bohol has moved out of Club 20 – the country’s 20 poorest provinces – and now occupies the 55th position out of 79, according to the National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB) of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

  Having moved up by leaps and bounds in terms of tourism and agriculture – Bohol’s two major economic drivers, largely because of the dismantling of the four insurgency fronts in the province as reported by the Philippine Army’s 802nd Infantry Brigade based in the interior town of Carmen, Aumentado said the Boholanos can now focus on working for peaceful, clean and orderly elections.

  “I am a man of peace; I abhor violence. That’s why I earned the ire of the New People’s Army when I campaigned among candidates in the previous elections against paying permit to campaign (PTC) fees, and among businessmen against paying revolutionary tax. I am making the same appeal now,” he told the council.

  The NPAs’ ire translated into an ambush they staged on February 13, 2004, a Friday, as the governor was on his way home for lunch from the Capitol, only a few meters from the Tagbilaran City Police Office.

  An impulsive instruction to his driver to make a left turn to the nearest newsstand to buy copies of the day’s national newspapers caught his ambushers off guard. Apparently, they anticipated that he will pass through the main avenue, and positioned themselves there. Nonetheless, the dark green Mitsubishi Pajero – the governor’s service vehicle at the time, absorbed six bullets although these missed him and his security escorts.

  The fronts may have been dismantled, but the governor is not ruling out the possible stalking by elements of the NPA’s Special Partisan Unit (Sparu) on him to score better at similar attempts.

  This prompted Col. Alan Luga, brigade commander, and Sr. Supt. Anthony Obenza, Bohol police provincial director, to issue an appeal to candidates and their supporters, as well as businessmen, to report to them should they receive demands to pay for PTC fees or revolutionary taxes.

  Luga said with the fronts already dismantled, such demands would only mean “visiting” Sparu elements or plain bandits riding on the wave of fear the NPAs have been and will always be trying to instill in people just to get easy money.

  He and Obenza said they are already looking into reports that members of the Mindanao-based Kuratong Baleleng robbery gang – or bandits turned guns-for-hire passing off as members of the outlawed group but allegedly disowned by the leader – are holing up in northern Bohol, waiting for the green light from their boss to strike.

  The military and the police are likewise conducting coordinated checkpoints in order to reign in loose firearms.

  With the possible firearms-related trouble already being looked into and prepared for by the police and the military, what remains to be done is stepping up the campaign against vote-buying in its myriad forms and variations, as well as other violations.

  Aumentado named Bohol Schools Division Superintendent Lorna Rances as vice chair, with the private sector like the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) and its partner Rotary Philippines, the Bohol Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), the Bohol Bankers Association (BBA), Bohol Alliance of Non-Government Organizations (Bangon), the church, the inter-faith groups and the indigenous peoples’ group, among others, as well as other government agencies to include the police and the military, and representatives of candidates for governor, vice governor and congressmen as members.

  The governor will issue the order constituting the coordination committee shortly.

  The crusade is on top of his other PPOC advocacy – curbing, if not stopping corruption and dynasty.   

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