Politicians fooling people: Abra PNP task force chief

By Dexter A. See

BANGUED, Abra – Senior Supt. Roberto Quinto Soriano, deputy police regional director for operations and newly installed Task Force Abra head said here it is high time people of Abra must wake up to reality that their politicians have been allegedly fooling them the past decades and continuously imposing their will on them.

“The awareness of the public on the unscrupulous activities of their local officials will help play a key role in curbing the rampant violence in this province,” Soriano said here last week.

He added local residents must come up with a concerted effort to make their local officials accountable to them by demanding where their Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) had been used the past decades.

According to Soriano, unscrupulous politicians in the different towns have been utilizing their IRA for the alleged hiring of goons to ensure their continuous reign in power, thus, they could intimidate and harass their constituents to follow their whims and caprices without fear because they they are in control of the situation.

“Because of the obvious abuses of local officials in the different parts of the province which is now putting its image in a bad light,” Soriano said, “people must now bond together to put an end to such imposition of will by their abusive leaders so there will be a shift in the behavior of people to bring back the culture of peace in the province.”

For the past two decades, Abra had been tagged as the killing fields of the North because of numerous violent incidents that claimed innocent lives of politicians and their supporters.

Despite previous commitments of local officials to embrace peace and order as one of their major thrusts of governance, violence still continues to exist in the province because erring politicians continue to intimidate and harass their constituents who are perceived to be against their leadership.

Soriano said law enforcers are doing their best to maintain peace and order in the province but they could not watch all perceived goons of most politicians.

The police official said what is important now is for the people to actively be vigilant in the affairs of government and become aggressive in checking the malpractices of their leaders so that they will send the message that they no longer patronize such authoritarian form of leadership and that what they want is to be free from their impositions.