Possible poll hotspots in CAR still to be determined

BAGUIO CITY (November 5, 2024)— Regional election officials in the highland region still has to determine which areas would become hotspots in the coming elections.

There was already a directive to election officials to determine locations possible to be dangerous to election officers, especially teachers who would be serving, Cordillera Regional Election Officer Julius Torres said Tuesday.

This, Torres explained, to enable them to employ measures to ensure that the election process in such locations identified as dangerous, will go on smoothly. 

He further explained that they should be ready because of the possibility that some teachers will back out from serving in the polls.

During the 2023 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (BSKE) elections, many teachers refused to serve Board of Election Tellers (BET), especially in some barangays in Abra who feared for their lives amid several election-related violence prior to the actual polling.

In Kalinga, some teachers also declined serving in the BSKE not because of safety concerns but out of “delicadeza” as some of them were related to the candidates.

Torres admitted they are anticipating that Abra would become dangerous because of earlier violent incidents in the past several weeks, though most have been not related to politics.

Torres said in such scenarios where teachers will refuse to serve, the assistance of the Philippine National Police (PNP) will be sought and deploy some of their personnel to man polling precincts in hotspots. He said they will have to train them though.

Comelec Cordillera Assistant Regional Director Vanessa Roncal said that they will also ask the help of the PNP and also the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) not just to be alternative or replacement election officers, but also for security in all the polling places. This will also assure, she explained, of the teachers safety in serving the polls.