By MIKHA FLORES
TWO men who offered to rig local election results in a town in Mindanao in exchange for money were arrested in an entrapment operation by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the poll body said on Tuesday.
Hadji Omar Masiding and Sultan Pundatoon Bagul were entrapped in an operation in a hotel in Manila on Monday which was organized with the cooperation of the Commission on Elections, Chairman Sixto Brillantes said. It was he who provided the marked money used for the entrapment.
The suspects had told Abdulsalam Hadji Harun, a mayoralty candidate of Simunul, Tawi-Tawi, that for P5 million,they can manipulate the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in his favor. Harun first reported the incident to Brillantes and then went to the NBI for help.