Hot or not?

COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) officials, including Chairman Sixto Brillantes himself who was in the province recently, can keep proclaiming that Pangasinan is not an election area of concern at all. But it is now quite hard to believe them, especially now with the deployment of a 63-strong Special Action Force team from the police headquarters Camp Crame.

There is no mistake that the manpower reinforcement is election-related because the new officer-in-charge provincial police director, Senior Superintendent Marlou Chan, said, “this is the initial salvo of the action plan with Pangasinan being put as priority area of concern in the mid-term elections”. From the sound of it, there is more to come.

But just days after the SAF team arrived and a subsequent joint command conference attended by the police, the army and the Comelec, there was Provincial Elections Officer Marino Salas echoing Brillantes’ “Pangasinan is normal” statement by announcing to the media that they do not plan to declare any part of the province as an area of concern.

Both Brillantes and Salas have also said that now that the election period has officially begun (January 13 with the implementation of the gun ban), the police are supposed to report and clear all their election-related actions and announcements with the Comelec. Obviously, that is not what’s happening.

What the public is getting now is mixed signals. Is Pangasinan hot or not?

The Comelec and the police need to sit down, talk, and find ways to strengthen their coordination efforts so that they don’t end up confusing the public and upsetting public officials who understandably are concerned about the province’s image.

Better to call a spade a spade. It’s more unsettling to be told one thing and see something else. Pangasinenses want an honest election. Let’s start with some honesty from those supposed to be in charge of ensuring a secure and fair poll in May.

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The people know

THE “Maguindanao Massacre” in 2011 killed more than 50 men and women, including more than 25 journalists. Also killed were 13 men in the “Atimonan Massacre”, the victims were on board two SUVs on January 6 this year.

But unlike in the 2011 carnage where the victims were unarmed, the 11 fatalities (2 were police officers, 2 were soldiers) in the 2013 incident carried eight firearms. While the victims in the “Maguindanao Massacre” were clearly shot in cold blood, police said the “Atimonan Massacre” was a shootout. But the NBI is singing a different tune, and was close to saying it was not a shootout but a rubout. Which is which, the people already know: The Unlucky 13 in Atimonan, killed by 50-plus police and military personnel at a supposed checkpoint, had been ambushed.

The motive behind the “Atimonan Massacre”, the people also know already: Turf war in gambling operations, such as “jueteng.” Only the naïve, if not the idiotic, would not know.

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