LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in this capital town on Friday said it has activated its “Kontra Bigay” committee tasked to handle possible cases of vote buying.
“We used to not give so much attention on this but we saw the need to ensure that we are ready to immediately act in case there will be information lodged alleging violations of the Comelec guidelines, specifically on vote buying,” lawyer Grace Faustino, municipal election officer, said on the sidelines of the “Saludsud ti umili” (people’s questions) candidates forum for the councilor, vice mayor and mayoralty positions of this agricultural town.
She said the committee has the Department of Justice, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and other government offices, as well as the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) as members, who will act on information and complaints.
“We have the DSWD because government aid is among the hottest issues on this topic for abuse of use of government resources,” Faustino said.
This town continues to hold a record for being peaceful during an election period, but they could not be complacent about the issue of vote buying, she said.
“Every election, aspirants in this town focus their campaign on promoting themselves and not capitalizing on causing damage to fellow candidates. It was visible today, nobody threw mud on another and they were all professional individuals, selling themselves to get the people to vote for them, which we hope will continue until the election day,” Faustino said.
She also called on the public to provide them information that would be sufficient to charge a candidate for vote buying.
Community participation
Fr. Manny Flores, head of the PPCRV for Baguio and Benguet, said in the same forum that they were glad many of the candidates attended the event to answer questions from the public about a number of issues and concerns.
Flores said “the questions delved on topics which are talked about by the public and we are glad to hear the views of our aspirants. This will help the voters choose their candidates on election day.”
He said they continue to recruit volunteer watchers from the different parishes to serve during the May 12 election and help ensure peaceful, orderly and honest casting of votes.
Flores said they will still do manual tallying of the votes cast based on the results at the precincts as their way of ensuring the integrity of the election results. **Liza Agoot
