2 nabbed for promising victory to candidate by rigging poll results

MANILA -- The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrested Monday two suspected swindlers who supposedly promised victory to candidates by manipulating the results of the May 13 automated elections.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Sixto Brillantes identified the suspects as Hadji Omar Masiding and Sultan Pundatoon Bagul, both from Lanao del Sur.

Masinding and Bagul were arrested in an entrapment operation conducted by the NBI Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) at Century Park Hotel in Manila.

Nelson Moreno, NBI-CTD Special Investigator, said the two suspects sought for an initial payment of P100,000 from Abdulsalam Hadji Harun, who is running for mayor in the town of Simunul, Tawi-Tawi. The total agreed amount was P5 million, NBI said.

Moreno said the two will be charged with estafa and usurpation of authority and are currently detained at the NBI Detention Cell.

Asked if the two will be charged with poll offenses, Brillantes said he will still study if there were election laws violated.

"This is more on swindling… I want to see the details of the case first before we can say if there were election offenses committed," he said.

With this development, Brillantes warned candidates running in "small municipalities" against the presence of swindlers claiming that they can manipulate results of the May 13 polls in their favor in exchange of a certain amount of money ranging in the millions.

These unscrupulous individuals, he said, introduce themselves as engineers of Smartmatic International, the supplier of the 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan machines to be used in the 2013 polls. (HDT/Sunnex)