Comelec mulls placing slain chief's village under poll hotspot
The Commission on Election is considering classifying Barangay Quipot as an election area of concern.
The plan comes in the wake of the killing of Brgy. Captain Jerry Colaja by two still unidentified gunmen last October 9 near the boundary between Brgys. Tambal and Danao.
Supt. Renato Gumban of the 6th Criminal Investigation and Detection Group said that they are entertaining several angles behind the killing, and are validating raw information regarding the identity of the killers.
Although they do not consider Colaja's killing as election-related, neither are they discounting the angle of politics in their investigation.
Assistant Regional Election Supervisor, lawyer Tomas Valera said yesterday that the matter will definitely be taken up during their command conference with regional police officials Monday next week.
Valera recalled that, in the last May elections, there was a request to transfer the counting of ballots from the mountainous barangays to the town proper due to the reported presence of armed persons.
The Comelec approved the transfer of the counting of ballots from three or four upland barangays, none of which was Quipot, as the latter was not as remote as the other villages.
When the Comelec meets with the Police Regional Office 6 next week, Valera expects that the barangays declared as election areas of concern would be more or less the same ones classified as such during the May elections.