DUE to the lack of evidence, some persons arrested for alleged vote buying during the 2019 midterm elections were already released, said Police Regional Office (PRO) Central Visayas Director Debold Sinas.
“Those who were arrested (for vote buying), I think they were already released since some elements of actual vote-buying were lacking in their cases,” he said during the critique session for the midterm National and Local Elections 2019 held at the PRO 7 on June 4, Tuesday.
Officials from the Philippine Coast Guard 7, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Cebu City Police Office, Cebu Provincial Police Office, and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) 7 joined the critique session.
Authorities filed criminal complaints against two Sangguniang Kabataan officials and two other persons in Barangay Cogon-Ramos, a senior citizen in Barangay Lorega-San Miguel, all of Cebu City and a village official including two other persons in Danao City for alleged violation of Sec. 261 of the Omnibus Election Code.
The four arrested persons in Cogon-Ramos, however, were cleared of the allegations on May 15, due to the lack of probable cause.
Sinas said that in spite of the arrests, vote buying still cannot be considered rampant in the region.
“First, I think there is not much massive vote buying. It is more of a perception,” he said.
According to him, citizen’s arrest is not that effective when it comes to stopping vote buying in elections.
“It’s hard to validate vote buying through citizen’s arrest especially when the arresting citizen is an electoral candidate himself. That would really mean trouble,” he said.
He then called on the Comelec 7 to look into the matter.
“As you can see, like what we did during the election, we tried to ask citizens who are vote buying, but they would not tell us. In cases of vote buying, both the vote buyers and sellers must be arrested. The problem is nobody wants to admit what they do. In fact, it is better if we have it procedural, like buy-bust, so that it would be easier,” he said.
As with the security during the elections, lawyer Veronico Petalcorin, acting Comelec Central Visayas Regional Director, said they were “100 percent satisfied” with the security provided by the police throughout the election period.
Sinas, however, said that if there’s something they can further do for the next elections, it would be to see to it that they can simultaneously deploy their personnel to their respective areas of assignments.
“Generally, our strategy was okay. We can, maybe, improve on the time of deployment. It is much better if it’s simultaneous. All the stakeholders were happy that we followed what we planned. There will be some changes but depending on the would-be identified election hot spots in the future,” he said. (WBS)