SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – The
Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), which will assist the police in
the Oct. 28 barangay elections in Central Luzon, has identified 214 barangays
as “areas of concern” in the region.
Col. Ernesto Torres, operations
chief of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, said in a Philippine Information
Agency-sponsored forum here Thursday that 61 of these barangays are in eight
towns in Aurora and 153 in 29 barangays in Nueva Ecija.
For the barangay polls, Nolcom
will deploy 443 field units and 518 augmentation forces in various parts of
Central Luzon, Torres said.
This would be on top of quick
response forces comprising 147 soldiers from the 7th ID, 518 from augmentation
forces, and 685 from field units, or a total of 1,350, to be activated during
the elections, he added.
Torres said only one
election-related killing has so far been reported in Central Luzon.
He identified the victim as
Rogelio Gayla, an incumbent councilman in Barangay San Nicolas in Victoria, Tarlac,
who was stabbed dead by a rival last Oct. 10.
Torres said that Nolcom’s 702nd
Infantry Brigade would assist the Commission on Elections and the police in the
village polls in Aurora and Nueva Ecija, while the 703rd IB would assist in the
rest of Central Luzon, including Pampanga, Tarlac, Zambales, Bataan, and
Bulacan.
Torres said communist groups have
fielded candidates in the barangay polls, adding though that the Communist
Party is no longer illegal.
“There is nothing contrary to law
if communists run for barangay elections, for as long as there is no violence
involved, and they do not carry firearms,” he said.
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