Huge sums of money being distributed to North Luzon voters

BAGUIO CITY – Large amounts of money were being distributed by supporters of candidates to voters vying for office in Northern Luzon at press time which religious and cause-oriented groups denounced.

Sources in Northern Luzon provinces said money was being doled out in regions 1, 2, 3 and Cordillera with different tactics on convincing voters – veiled threats to offers of government positions, livelihood and contract projects.

In Dagupan City , House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. warned his rival, Dagupan City Mayor Benjamin Lim, to stop the malicious attacks against him or else he will expose what he calls as “shameful” conditions that Lim had demanded to withdraw his challenge to the incumbent congressman.

“All the attacks of Lim against him are false, no one believes him,” said De Venecia who is seeking reelection for Pangasinan’s fourth district congressional seat against Lim.

De Venecia De Venecia had filed a disqualification case against Lim for “massive vote buying.”

Lim had also accused De Venecia of resorting to vote buying after the Speaker distributed Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats membership cards with corresponding insurance benefits.

The complaint of Lim, however, was not accepted by the Commission on elections Law Department of lack of sufficient evidence.

Lim’s lawyer Francisco Baraan III said de Venecia had distributed accident insurance cards to supporters -- a form of vote-buying.

In Baguio , religious groups expressed alarm about “enormous sums of money” being distributed by some political parties in a bid to recruit supporters or influence voters to vote for their candidates.

“We fear that if they are spending so much money, there is the probability that they would resort to manipulating the votes or the results of the voting,” said a statement of the religious groups.

The groups said their members discovered the distribution of money when they started recruiting volunteers for efforts to safeguard the ballots and help ensure clean and honest elections.

It was learned the groups failed to recruit the desired number of volunteers because the prospective volunteers had already been recruited by some political parties that offered “1,000 or more per day, per volunteer.”

If the politicians can spend that much, what would prevent them from manipulating the results of the elections, the groups said.

They also said that part of a volunteer’s job is to provide an updated list of voters and the volunteers will be trained in ascertaining how many eligible voters are there at a certain precinct so that any excess would be immediately looked into.

At the same time, the religious groups renewed their call for responsible voting and called on voters in the city to vote for candidates who are God-fearing, competent, and discerning.

“Let us vote for candidates who are tested, who display good judgment, whose lives are testimonies of their belief, and who have no record of graft and corruption,” the groups stated in the guidelines released to parishioners.

They said a good candidate should be a man or woman of God should be pro-democracy and pro-country, should be pro-poor and pro-people, and should be a person of integrity and transparency.

In other parts of the Cordillera region, multi-sect oral and religious groups have also called on the voters in their respective areas to use their conscience and firm judgment in choosing the leaders who would govern them in the next three years. – By Jennelyn Mondejar, Dexter A. See, Armand Tamaray, Jerry Padilla and Joan Capuna