153 of 380 election period incidents ‘political’ — PNP

Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
First posted 18:41:06 (Mla time) May 16, 2007

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine National Police (PNP) has so far validated 153 “politically motivated” violent incidents of the 380 recorded over the election period while 103 more incidents are being validated.

PNP Director General Oscar Calderon has formed a special task force to investigate election-related violent incidents (ERVIs) and come up with results “ASAP” (as soon as possible), appointing Director Geary Barias, chief of the PNP’s Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM), to head the group.

Quoting DIDM statistics, Barias said there have been 380 violent incidents since the election period started on January 14, of which 153 were “politically motivated,” 124 were “not politically motivated,” and 103 tagged “for validation.”

Of the 153 politically-motivated incidents, 55 were cases of “harassment” that did not case injury or death, 57 resulted in injuries, while 41 incidents were fatal, Barias said.

Of the 124 cases that did not involve politics, 27 were cases of harassment, 41 led to injuries, 49 were fatal, and seven cases were abductions, he added.

Of the 103 cases being validated, 48 are harassment cases, 28 caused injuries, 21 were killings and six were abductions.

“I’ve strengthened my investigation team to be headed by General Barias…They will thresh out which cases are really election-related, which are not related [to the elections], which are [cases of] terrorism, and which are NPA [New People’s Army] activities,” Calderon said.

The PNP chief said the alert in Metro Manila has been lowered to the second-lowest level, or heightened, while that in the rest of the country remains at full, the highest level.

“The time frame is ASAP,” Barias said when asked if Calderon set a deadline to finish the investigation. “We are shifting to investigation mode, as ordered by the Chief, PNP.”

Barias said Calderon ordered him to investigate first the burning of a school building used as a polling precinct in Taysan town, Batangas province, in which two teachers died.

He said there were “strong indications” that the NPA had been hired by local candidates to carry out the attack.

View article as posted on INQUIRER.net