Army men deployed to Abra due to poll ‘wars’

BANGUED, Abra – Additional Army troops are being readied for Abra in the wake of tension among warring political candidates in the northwestern Cordillera province.

Col. Loreto Magundayao, chief of civil-military operations of the Isabela-based 5th Infantry Division, a company-size troop, said around 100 men will be sent to Abra to augment its forces there and prevent election related violence from taking place.

Abra is one of the country’s identified election hot spots owing to its election violence, including political killings taking place during election time. It is also known to have a number of private armed groups allegedly being maintained by some politicians there.

“This deployment of additional troops in Abra has been in answer to an urgent request for augmentation of our troops there in connection with the elections,” Magundayao said.

Abra is the base of the Army’s 503rd Infantry Brigade, one of the three brigades under the 5th ID whose jurisdiction covers Cagayan Valley, Cordillera and Ilocos regions.

Earlier, the Army said, its troops in Kalinga and Mountain Province have been placed on heightened alert amid New People’s Army threats to disrupt the forthcoming elections.

“A bulk of our forces is now in the Cordillera, especially in some areas of Mountain Province and Kalinga to ensure the peaceful electoral exercise in these areas in the wake of communist rebels’ plans to disrupt the polls,” Magundayao said.

The rebels in both provinces were reportedly out to disrupt the election to perpetrate the fiction that they are still a force to reckon with, the Army said.

The heightened alert also came as the Army claimed rebels were intensifying exaction of fees from local candidates of permits to campaign and win in so-called influenced or controlled areas.

“The NPA is reported to have been collecting P5,000 from town candidates to P2 million for congressional seats,” said Major Rosendo Armas, chief of the Tarlac-based Northern Luzon Command’s first civil relations group. -- CL