Owing to the latest shootout between police and two men suspected of being responsible for the strafing incident in Dumanjug town, both the police and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) are now urging local candidates to sign a peace covenant to ensure their cooperation with authorities for next year’s elections.
To the public at large, any peace covenant entered into by politicians, especially local candidates, is largely a piece of paper that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans except perhaps for show on the part of the Comelec.
Yet the police are making a big deal out of it if only to reassure the public, or in this case Cebu-based voters, that the elections will be generally peaceful. In fairness, based on the 2010 and 2013 elections, the elections in Cebu have been peaceful, with the small exceptions of some unfriendly confrontations between candidates that were usually settled by the police.
The shootout last week produced more ugly clues about alleged links between the suspects and Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia, who asked for the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into it due to his suspicion that the encounter was more of a rubout than a shootout.
The confrontation between Vice Mayor Efren Gica and murder suspect Bemar Mejares, who supposedly hosted the two suspects before their untimely demise at his own home, didn’t produce any useful information that would establish whether there are criminal groups being employed for next year’s elections.
Despite this, Comelec provincial supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano isn’t too keen on placing Dumanjug under Comelec control since this would definitely stretch inadequate personnel and resources to their limits while ensuring that other areas under its watch are kept peaceful too.
To both their credit, Mayor Garcia and Vice Mayor Gica are not that keen on having their town placed under Comelec control. With the recent Supreme Court ruling to junk the “no biometrics, no vote” policy, the Comelec is under pressure to rework its master list of voters in time for May 2016.
The last thing that both the Comelec and the voting public need is violence from armed groups or criminal syndicates under the thrall of competing candidates. At least Metro Cebu-based voters are wise and vigilant enough not to be swayed by tough talk and threats of violence from local politicians.
The same, however, cannot be said of voters in the countryside whose way of life is vulnerable to local officials who have established their bailiwicks through the years and are not averse to employing violence to keep voters in line to speak.
It is these voters that the Comelec and the entire police and military should strive to protect. A peace covenant may be of some value if it is signed in cooperation with stakeholders who are committed to see the election process through.
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