The strafing last Wednesday of the house of a barangay councilman in Tabogon town in northern Cebu has prompted a Provincial Board Member to call for the inclusion of the entire fourth legislative district in the election watchlist.
“I hope the Comelec (Commission on Elections) will see this as grounds to include Tabogon in its election hotspots. It would be better to place the whole district on the list,” PB Member Sun Shimura of Cebu’s fourth district said in a phone interview yesterday.
Shimura made the call after the strafing incident targeting the house of Libjo Barangay Councilman Nathaniel Cortes, who is a supporter of reelectionist Mayor Zigfred Duterte of the Kusug sa Norte local party.
SPO3 Epifanio Comedido, investigator of Tabogon Police, said they were looking into politics as the motive of the strafing of Cortes’s house.
Cortes told police that he, his wife and their 19-year-old son were awakened by bursts of gunfire at past midnight last Wednesday as two men on a motorcycle strafed their house. No one was hurt in the attack, but some window jalousies in his house were broken.
Police found empty shells of a .45 pistol near his house.
It was the third strafing incident in northern Cebu in less than two weeks.
Two consecutive strafing incidents were reported last week in San Francisco, Camotes Islands where the houses of Bakud supporter Moses Wenceslao and Himesulan Barangay Captain Rey Maranga, who are both allies of incumbent San Francisco Mayor Al Arquillano, were targeted.
Shimura said strafing incidents are not unusual during election season.
He said it was not their opponents’ intention to kill, only to threaten and intimidate.
“This is all politics. There is no need to use violence, unless they have other intentions,” said Shimura.
The fourth district includes Bogo City, Tabogon, Bantayan and Medellin.
San Francisco, Camotes Islands is part of Cebu’s fifth district.
Meanwhile, Senior Supt. Rey Lyndon Lawas, Police Regional Office Central Visayas’ (PRO-7) chairman of the validation committee on election-related incidents, said they may include San Francisco and Tabogon towns in the election watchlist.
“Our attention is now on this. We have directed our men to further strengthen the security aspect in each police station. We do not want this to escalate further. Our chief of police should be on top of this,” said Lawas, who is also the PRO-7 deputy regional director for operations (DRDO).
The validation board, which is composed of the police officers and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), will meet today to assess the incidents.
Seven areas in Cebu are on the poll watchlist, which include Carmen, Tuburan and Medellin.