Zamboanga Sibugay

By JULES BENITEZ
Mindanews

ZAMBOANGA CITY– Five persons were killed and 10 others were wounded in 14 incidents of election related violence in the provinces covered by the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (WesMinCom).

WesMinCom chief Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino also reported one incident of ballot snatching and the declaration of failure of elections in seven towns  during a press conference organized by the United Front for Honest, Orderly and Peaceful Elections (UF-Hope) late Monday  night.

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AT LEAST a dozen people were killed and another dozen injured on Election Day today in what police declare as the “most peaceful elections so far” but in what a Commission on Elections official considers as more violent than the country’s past elections.

Task Force Honest, Orderly and Peaceful Elections (Task Force HOPE) of the Armed Forces recorded 37 cases of election-related violence nationwide on Monday, including six shooting incidents, 13 episodes of harassment, five encounters, five cases of voters intimation, three mauling incidents and two bomb explosions. The task force also monitored the confiscation of a firearm and a ballot snatching incident.
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By JOSEPH ARNEL DELIVERIO

THREE armed persons were killed early Monday morning in a brief gunbattle with police operatives in R.T. Lim town in Zamboanga Sibugay province.

Joint elements of the local police and the Philippine National Police Special Armed Forces provincial office were manning a checkpoint in Barangay Poblacion at 2 a.m. when an armed group tried to force its way through and fired on the law enforcers.
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By JOSEPH ARNEL DELIVERIO
Sibugay Express

IPIL, Zamboanga Sibugay.–A bomb exploded in front of radio station Magic 103 FM in Barangay Kitabog, Titay town, this province, early Monday evening.

The station, which is owned by Sibugay governor George T. Hofer, is about 20 meters away from his residence.

Wounded in the blast was Nestor Abando, 46, who was aboard a multi-cab passenger vehicle passing by the area when the bomb exploded around 6:45 p.m.

Abando sustained superficial shrapnel wounds on his back.

Witnesses say two men riding a colored yellow XRM Honda motorcycle stopped along the highway in front of the station. The passenger then got off and lobbed what could be a grenade at the station.

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By JOSEPH ARNEL DELIVERIO
Sibugay Express and VERA Files

THE Court of Appeals, in a dramatic last-minute decision, has ordered Romeo “Jon-Jon” Jalosjos Jr. reinstated as a voter in Ipil town in Zamboanga Sibugay, allowing him to run for a congressional seat in the province’s second district despite his being the incumbent mayor of Tampilisan in the neighboring province of Zamboanga del Norte.

Jalosjos Jr. is a son of convicted rapist and former Zamboanga del Norte congressman Romeo Jalosjos.

No less than the court sheriff of the CA’s 22nd Division based in Cagayan de Oro City flew by helicopter to Ipil town on Friday, Nov. 27, to personally deliver the order to the Ipil Registration Board, just hours before the Election Registration Board released its official voters’ list.

Jalosjos Jr. called the CA decision an act of “divine intervention.”

The election in Zamboanga Sibugay is shaping up as a contest to watch. Jalosjos and half-brother Rommel, who is running for governor, have initially claimed to be the official candidates of the administration party Lakas-Kampi-CMD.

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