A House leader on Monday expressed concern that brownouts in May elections will likely occur due to the series of bombings on transmission towers in Mindanao
Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez lamented that it has been a year and still the mastermind has not been unmasked.
Rodriguez said the situation demands that President Benigno Aquino III should convene a national security meeting to avert any power crisis during the crucial weeks before the May 9 elections.
“We are facing the May 9 elections. What will happen if we do not have supply? How can we have elections that will be credible?” Rodriguez said at a congressional hearing Monday.
The House energy committee, chaired by Oriental Mindoro Rep. Rey Umali, led the briefing by the Department of Energy and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines on the “Sustainable Power Development Plan and Transmission Development Plan,” with focus on Mindanao, in light of the recent bombing of power transmission towers in Lanao del Sur, Mindanao.
Since January 2015, a total of 18 towers of the NGCP have been bombed by unidentified men.
Rodriguez warned that the country might be facing “a failure of elections in Mindanao comprising of 22-million people or 11-million votes.”
The region has a total voting population of 12.6 million, the Commission on Elections said.
During the hearing, DoE Undersecretary Mylene Capongcol said the government is looking at the possibility of creating a task force to handle the what Rodriguez described as “approaching crisis proportion” situation.
Capongcol said that Palace officials had already been informed of the series of bombings of the towers of the NGCP.
She said the task force shall compose of the local government units, Department of Interior and Local Government, Department of Energy, NGCP, and the military and the police.