Residents go after flying voters

AFTER scoring success in having 81 voter-applications voided, a group of residents in Cagayan de Oro's Barangay Taglimao are now targeting more "flying voters."

The residents said the suspected multiple registrants have already made it into the official voters' list and even voted in the May 10 elections.

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Lawyer Evangeline T. Carrasco, legal counsel for the Taglimao petitioners, said those nonresidents managing to register themselves and vote in Barangay Taglimao could mean that the practice is rampant in other barangays as well.

Detection, however, largely depends on locals who are familiar with the people in their neighborhood, Carrasco added.

Last week, city Commission on Elections (Comelec) supervisor Joan Abucejo-Vallejos said that five voter-applicants from downtown Barangay 18 were denied after they failed to show proof of residency.

Leonisa O. Cuevas, one of the Taglimao petitioners, said she and her neighbors filed the petition when they started noticing strangers that cast votes in their area during last elections. The sight of unfamiliar faces claiming to be neighbors alarmed them, she said, worried that "flying voters" could thwart the will of native residents during elections.

Cuevas's group was behind the disapproval of 81 voter-applications in Barangay Taglimao subsequently found by the city Comelec to be fraudulent. Most of the applicants turned out to be residents of other barangays, while some reside in Opol town, Misamis Oriental.

Now, Cuevas and her co-petitioners are going after at least 112 regular voters whom they accused of being "flying voters."

"Kana sila tanan mga flying voters na ug dili mga residenti sa among barangay. Nakabotar sila adtong eleksiyon sa Mayo kay gipanghakot, (They're all flying voters and not residents in our barangay. They were just brought here in the last elections)," Cuevas said.

However, Jocelyn O. Guialani, Taglimao's barangay chairperson, denied any presence of "flying voters" in her village, saying she would resign if this can be proved.

Guialani also accused one of the petitioners, Engr. Henry Abrillo, of harboring political ambitions, and planning to assemble a rent-a-crowd in the coming Oct. 25 barangay and Sanguniang Kabataan elections.

Abrillo was not immediately available for comment but Cuevas said Guialani was merely trying to divert the issue. (Annabelle L. Ricalde)