MONDAY's conduct of national and local elections in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro City was "generally peaceful" amid a bomb-throwing incident earlier.
Motorcyle-riding men lobbed a Molotov bomb on the house of Jasaan Commission on Elections (Comelec) Supervisor Efleda Jacutin Geralde at around 2:15 a.m., hours before the voting was to start at 7 a.m.
No one was injured in the blast but the explosion partially burned the Geralde's house, police said.
Police Chief Inspector Regina Abanales, Camp Alagar spokesperson, said the police had yet to establish motive adding that the incident may be election-related.
"Overall situation, so far generally peaceful ang elections, according to the reports of our station commanders all over Region X," she said. "In fact, this has been the most peaceful elections ever."
Vote buying
Police in Cagayan de Oro reported no major incidents, except for the reported vote buying by candidates since Sunday.
"In Barangay Bonbon, for example, you'd see drunken people on the roadside hours after they received their P250 each," said one of the Sun.Star volunteer, whose identity this paper withholds for security reasons.
Several volunteers of ABS-CBN "Boto Mo Ipatrol Mo" showed on TV more evidence of vote buying activities in the city on Monday. They displayed bundles of small bills to which were attached sample ballots of PaDayon Pilipino candidates and independent congressional candidate Lourdes dela Rosa-Darimbang.
Both camps were not immediately available for comment.
'Violators'
Comelec Northern Mindanao assistant regional director Lawyer Ma. Dulce Cuevas-Banson said they will settle score with "election violators" once the counting is over.
"Affidavits of witnesses are being readied and proper documentation of these alleged election violations is ongoing," said Cuevas-Banson.
Meanwhile, several Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines bogged down at the start of the voting, thus delaying the voting process from 30 minutes to two hours.
Adding to the delay was the varied voting policies adopted by different clustered precincts—with some Board of Election Inspectors virtually halting the voting time by not allowing voters to fill up the ballots when a PCOS machine breaks down.
Voting hours extension
Some precincts, however, finished well before the extended 7 p.m. deadline as BEIs allowed voters to fill the ballots first and fed the same to the machines later.
In Barangay Macabalan and elsewhere, voting was still ongoing by 8.30 p.m. as Comelec allowed those who didn't make it the 7 p.m. deadline as long as they were already queuing outside the polling center.
Meanwhile, reports circulated on the presence of pre-shaded ballots being distributed to voters in certain precincts.
This was later clarified to be an "honest mistake."
Leo Vincent Cadete, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting volunteer, said some teachers had mistakenly distributed completed ballots to some voters—leading some to think that their ballots had been filled up long before they could even touch them.
'Most peaceful'
The military, however, said this year's election has been the "most peaceful" elections so far.
"So far, this has been the most peaceful if we will compare it to the previous elections," said Col. Ricardo Nepomuceno, spokesman of the Armed Forces' Task Force Honest, Orderly and Peaceful Elections.
"We hope this would hold until tonight and throughout until the counting (of the votes) is over," Nepomuceno added.
Nepomuceno said that as of 3 p.m. Monday, they recorded 37 election-related violent incidents based on the reports of military units nationwide.
He said this number was far lower compared to the previous elections where incidents "go by the hundreds." He, however, failed to give the number of violent incidents in previous elections.
All over the country, at least nine people were killed while 12 others were wounded in over 30 violent incidents that marred the country's first nationwide automated elections on Monday.
The 37 incidents were broken down into six shooting incidents, 13 harassments, five encounters, one ransacking/robbery, one confiscation of a firearm, one ballot snatching, five voter intimidations, three mauling and two explosions of improvised explosives.
Violent clashes between supporters of rival political clans are commonplace in Philippine elections. With reports from Mercie Belandres, Sarah Jane Ditucalan, Al-Amira Alonto, Mera Princess Arpilleda, MSU-Marawi Interns