THE anti-crime group Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption urged the Commission on Elections on Wednesday to intensify its drive against private armed groups to preserve the credibility of the forthcoming elections in May.
VACC president Dante Jimenez made the appeal as he questioned why the Department of Justice was delaying the prosecution of a woman and her husband, both incumbent town officials in Lanao del Norte, from whose home lawmen seized a large cache of high-powered firearms.
Jimenez said the law enforcers raided the residence of Pantao Ragat Mayor Eleanor Lantud and her husband, incumbent Vice Mayor Lacson Mangotara Lantud three years ago and seized a total of 31 firearms.
The guns included 15 M1 Garand rifles, two M16 Armalite rifles, six M16 rifles with attached grenade launchers, two M79 grenade launchers, one M-60 machine gun, one 30-caliber bar sniper rifle, one 45-caliber pistol, two 9mm machine pistols, one 9mm pistol, and thousands of ammunition and grenades.
DoJ regional prosecutor Jaime Umpa filed charges of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives against the Lantud couple and several bodyguards in February 2013, but the case is still pending at the Justice department.
Jimenez said that authorities should prove their seriousness in their campaign against private armed groups by holding the two local executives liable for violating the law and asked the military and the police not to support any armed group to prevent election-related violence.
He said that aside from enforcing the election gun ban that has so far netted more than 900 violators, authorities should also focus on dismantling known private armed groups operating in the provinces.
Also on Wednesday, the Comelec has found that the National Printing Office was printing ballots faster than the poll body’s ability to verify the ballots and announced has added 54 more machines to make the verification process faster.
“We need to add more machines and add more verifiers, so that the verification can catch up with the printing,” Bautista said adding that the additional 54 machines was also delivered to the NPO on Wednesday. “This in order to speed up the printing.”
There are 200 vote-counting machines (VCMs) being used for the verification process and about 350 Comelec workers are feeding the VCM with ballots to check if it will be accepted.
“As you can see, the printing becomes quicker because of the shorter ballot. But because of this, the verification process has some difficult time catching up,” Bautista said.
As of Wednesday, the NPO ahs printed 12.3-million ballots and only 5.1 million ballots were verified.