PNP and AFP to deploys troops in ARMM for the elections

Miami
July 8, 2008
Story 2: PNP and AFP to deploys troops in ARMM for the elections

Both the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) will deploy personnel at the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) for the forthcoming ARMM elections on August 11, 2008.

The PNP will deploy about 7,253 police personnel and the AFP will deploy 5,337 troops, this was confirmed by Deputy Director General Emmanuel Carta, Deputy PNP Chief for Operations.

Carta also said that they created a national task force ARMM elections which he will be headed and for the regional it will be headed by ARMM Regional Director Chief Supt. Joel Goltiao. He also said that the AFP has their own task force which is dubbed as Task Force Halalan.

Goltiao said that they have not recorded any intense political rivalry at ARMM., “There were no record of election related violence. What we receive are some incidents of bombing and encounters especially toppling of transmission lines or power lines which cause some brown outs.”

They are also confident that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will not sabotage the elections. “The stand of the MILF is not to participate on the election, they are in boycott. Though lately we observed increased atrocities by the MILF and the MNLF but these atrocities are not election related, we presume they are just pressuring the government to conclude the peace process” Goltiao said.

The PNP is expecting to have a peaceful elections because three factors for violence are not present, these are the intense political rivalry, presence of armed group and previous election related violent incident. Because of this they do not have immediate areas of concern.
Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino present at the command conference in Camp Crame said that they are confident that there will be no cheating will happen.

Tolentino said that on July 22 they will have a mock election in Maguindanao for the public to test how accurate and secure the votes will be. After that the machines will be sealed again and will make sure that no one will touch the said machines.

Deployment of forces will be concentrated on the machines and polling centers.

Voters in ARMM will have to vote for their Governor, Vice-Governor, and three Assemblyman for each of the Regional Legislative Districts. The Comelec said that there are 7 candidates for governor, 5 for vice-governors and 78 for assemblyman.