Friday, October 26, 2007 Poll troops deployed today
TROOPS assigned to secure polling places for Monday’s barangay and youth elections will be deployed today.
Cebu Provincial Police Office Director Carmelo Valmoria also said that 112 police officers will be transferred before the elections as they have relatives running in the areas where they are assigned.
Valmoria said they submitted the list of officers to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and will implement this as soon as they get approval.
He also identified all 45 barangays classified as election areas of immediate concern due to insurgency and 15 barangays classified as areas of concern due to intense political rivalry and a history of poll violence.
Valmoria explained that the 45 barangays included are all affected by insurgency. These include the barangays classified as influenced, less influenced and threatened barangays.
He added that while most of these were in Cebu’s mid-north area, there were also some barangays in the south and urban areas with sectoral organizations sympathetic to the communist cause.
With the possibility that the New People’s Army would field their own candidates or support some, they are keeping a tight watch over these barangays.
Valmoria, though, declined to identify the barangays found to have intense political rivalry.
Divisions
However, he said these were in the towns of Barili, Naga, Santander, Pinamungajan, Daan-bantayan and Sta. Fe and Lapu-Lapu City.
Like with the May 14 polls, the CPPO created eight subtask groups for each congressional district and the island towns for this Monday’s elections.
Heading the first district is Supt. Erson Digal while the second district will be under Supt. Teofilo Siclot.
Chief Insp. Julian Entoma will be in charge of the third district while the fourth district will be under Supt. Audie Villacin.
In charge of the fifth district is Supt. Juanito Enguerra while the sixth district will be under Supt. Herman Lungayan.
Subtask group Banta-yan Island, headed by Chief Insp. Jason Mangaron was already deployed last Tuesday. The Camotes Island subtask group is headed by Chief Insp. Virgilio Apurado.
At the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7, Chief Supt. Ronald Roderos said they have 3,820 personnel who will be fielded during the elections for Central Visayas.
These will be broken down into 735 from the Cebu City Police Office, 245 from the Mandaue City Police Office, 1,231 from the CPPO, 788 from the Bohol Provincial Police Office, 707 from the Oriental Negros Provincial Police Office and 114 from the Siquijor Provincial Police Office.
On top of this, they have 1,135 barangay liaison officers in each barangay for easy communication.
Roderos said the cellular phone numbers of each of these liaison officers is with the election monitoring action centers.
A test call from Camp Crame assured that all these officers could be contacted.
They also have 472 personnel from the Regional Training School on standby. (MEA)
