By ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
BANGUED, Abra.—In the afternoon of March 23 this year, 50 heavily armed guards of mayoral candidate Cromwell Luna appeared at the kindergarten graduation of Tineg Central School in Barangay Agsimao in Tineg town. Eyewitnesses said children wailed, old men and women cried, while the rest scampered for cover as the men indiscriminately fired their M-14, M-16 and M-203 rifles at the crowd.
This story is told in a handwritten document entitled, “Affidavit,” and signed by barangay officials of Agsimao and around 80 individuals, including Polish priest Pawel Jacek Stadnik and Sister Purisa Tayaban of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Among the signatories was Luna’s opponent, mayoral candidate Lenin Benwaren.
But Benwaren had charges of his own to face. Luna reported to the police that he was ambushed by Benwaren’s armed guards earlier that day, prompting Luna and 11 of his companions to file attempted murder charges against Benwaren and his men at the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor.
For a town in the far reaches of mountainous Abra, Tineg has become the setting for intense election violence. The town has only 3,208 registered voters. It is about 80 km. northwest of Bangued, bordering the provinces of Apayao and Ilocos Norte, with many villages highly inaccessible. Barangay Agsimao, where the shooting took place, can be reached only by foot and is about a day’s walk from the neighboring village of Lapat-Balantay. During the rainy season, Tineg’s rough and muddy roads become impassable even by four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Yet politicians are fighting for control of Tineg, the largest of Abra’s towns with a land area of 744 sq. km. Because internal revenue allotments (IRA) are based partly on land area, Tineg receives the biggest IRA among Abra’s 27 towns, making this backwoods town the province’s richest. Records from the Abra Provincial Planning and Development Office show that in 2009, the town’s IRA was P68 million, higher even than the P57 million of the capital Bangued.
Abra ranks ninth among the top 10 poorest provinces in the country with half its population impoverished, according to the National Statistics Coordination Board records of 2006. But while Abra’s people are poor, some of its towns are rich, and it is common knowledge here that politicians run for local positions to gain access to the towns’ IRA.
It is no coincidence then that the positions of mayor in Tineg and Bangued, the province’s richest towns, also happen to be the most hotly contested in this year’s elections. Also the subjects of intense fighting are the positions of congressional representative and governor.
As early as Aug. 26, 2009, the Abra Multi-Sectoral Group (AMSG) composed of the church, civil society organizations, LGU representatives, members of the Philippine Naitonal Police and the Army said it would try its “best to change the traditional political image of Abra,” said Divine Word Bishop Leopoldo Jaucian of the Bangued diocese.
That image is one of electoral violence, which has persisted in Abra since the 1960s when Abra’s political families started maintaining private armies. In a “Joint Position Statement of the Abra Multi-Sectoral Group and Elected Officials for Lasting Peace,” the various sectors condemned “violence as a means of managing conflict.”
Abra’s political families deny maintaining private armies, but the PNP is monitoring at least three politicians who are reportedly maintaining partisan or private armed groups (PAGs).
Tineg has been a battleground for such armed groups. Here, two political families are trying to wrest control of the town from incumbent Mayor Edwin Crisologo, who is seeking reelection.
One is the Luna family, headed by Rep. Cecilia Seares-Luna, mother of Tineg mayoral candidate Cromwell and his brother, Lagayan town mayor Jendricks Luna. The Lunas own six army-type trucks often mistaken for military vehicles which the family uses for its campaign sorties.
The other is the Benwaren family which once controlled Tineg. In 2002, then Tineg mayor Clarence Benwaren, brother of current mayoral candidate Lenin, was killed while attending a church wedding in Batangas.
A string of incidents has since put Tineg on the list of election hotspots. In the 2007 elections, the mayor’s wife, Brenda Crisologo, was shot at while ballots were being counted at the Holy Spirit Academy in Bangued. She died days later. The following year, Tineg Sangguniang Bayan member Pedro Inon was gunned down in his residence in Bangued. At least 12 others have also been killed since 2001.
In a 2005 special report, then Police Regional Director now PNP chief Jesus Verzosa identified Tineg as one of 15 Abra towns maintaining “extension offices” in Bangued. The “concentration of local chief executives” and their security detail has “earned Bangued the monicker “central government,” the report said.
With the towns “abandoned” and not having municipal halls and police stations, the “void leaves the territorial jurisdiction vulnerable to insurgent infiltration, influence, harassment and attacks,” the report read.
Police records show 17 shooting incidents all over Abra from November 2009 to March 24, 2010, leaving eight people dead.
Excluded from police records are those from the Abra Provincial Hospital and the Dr. Petronilo V. Seares Sr. Memorial Hospital, both in Bangued, which show 25 other shooting incidents from November 1 to April 1. Among these cases is that of a 15-year-old boy hospitalized for multiple gunshot wounds and another 9-year-old boy who was hit by a stray bullet on New Year’s Eve.
Before the AMSG issued the statement calling for lasting peace last August, unidentified men fired at the house of Abra Today writer Marjorie Trinidad, allegedly for writing a not-so-favorable article about the Abra Electric Cooperative. In June of the same year, unidentified men fired at the Saint Arnold Communications Center that houses the church-owned DZPA radio, Abra Today as well as the office of the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government.
Aside from these incidents, several individuals identified with Bangued Mayor Dominic Valera also released affidavits to national media claiming that men in fatigue uniforms have been intimidating people in Bangued barangays. Another affidavit released to national media was that of Valera’s daughter and Bangued Municipal Health Officer, Dr. Maria Christina Cabrera, who accused Lagayan Mayor Jendricks Luna of pointing a gun at her in the evening of April 5. Luna has denied the allegation.
Police cite the intense political rivalries as cause of election-related violence. Dominic Valera and Ryan Luna, erstwhile allies turned bitter enemies, are candidates for mayor of Bangued. Valera’s daughter, Ma. Jocelyn Bernos, and Luna’s mother, Cecilia Seares-Luna are vying for Abra’s lone congressional seat. Another son of Seares-Luna, Cromwell, also aspires to be the mayor of Tineg along with reelectionist Edwin Crisologo and former family friend Benwaren.
As of end of January this year, Verzosa reported that the PNP is monitoring 45 PAGs while 25 others are “subject for validation” and “distributed in the 16 regions of the country, excluding ARMM.”
The PNP’s Firearms and Explosives Division puts the number of total registered firearms in Abra at 2,755 where 908 have revoked or expired licenses while 1,847 have been renewed.
From Nov. 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010, Abra police have confiscated and recovered 34 firearms, mostly .45- and .38-caliber, while two other firearms have been surrendered.
Both Mayor Valera of Bangued and Mayor Crisologo of Tineg have filed petitions to have their “respective towns and/or the entire Abra to be under Commission on Election control,” according to Provincial Election Supervisor lawyer Vanessa Roncal.
Roncal said she would “only comment (on the petitions) before the Comelec en banc.”
Both Valera and Crisologo’s complaints are against the sons of congresswoman Luna, Jendricks (spelled “Jentrix” in the complaint) and Cromwell, provincial police Senior Supt. Ernesto Gaab and other police officials. The latter have been given until April 27 to submit their replies.
Cromwell Luna admitted that he was in Tineg on March 23 to campaign and attend the feast of the Annunciation of the Lord Mission Station scheduled on March 24 to 25.
He said that in the morning of March 23, he received a letter informing him that no one was allowed to bring firearms to Agsimao, but his security insisted he be armed, especially after he reportedly received text messages warning he would be killed if he set foot in Agsimao.
He said he was with more than 40 people, about half of them women, civilians and several candidates running under his slate.
“I do not deny that 20 of my companions were armed,” he said, adding that the town is known for its volatile peace and order situation.
Luna said his security detail was particularly cautious because some of Benwaren’s supporters had “suicidal tendencies,” referring to Totoy Buyao, allegedly a supporter of Benwaren, who killed Crisologo’s wife in 2007. Buyao was himself killed by an Army ranger minutes after he shot Brenda.
As a result, Luna said he took the necessary precaution of asking his guards to frisk and search people who wanted to meet him.
Luna belied allegations that his armed escorts threatened and harassed Agsimao residents and that some of his companions were members of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU), a militia group detailed in nearby Lagayan town where his brother Jendricks is mayor.
While the 41st Infantry Battalion says it is not providing Luna security, the same cannot be said of the CAFGU. Col. Essel Soriano, commanding officer of the 503rd Infantry Brigade, confirmed the dissolution on April 14 of the CAFGU detachment in Lagayan.
Soriano said all 39 CAFGU Active Auxiliaries (CAAs) in the Lagayan detachment, including nine who accompanied Cromwell Luna in Tineg on March 23, have resigned. He said detachment commander T/Sgt. Cesar Zarate is “under investigation.”
Soriano added that the CAAs in Lagayan refused to undergo a scheduled training in Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya and just decided to resign. Although they would have been given an option to train in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur, he said the CAAs “never came back.”
But Jendricks Luna’s side of the story is that the CAAs who accompanied his brother asked to be terminated because they were already elected as “kapitan, sanggunian and kagawad (captain, councilor and councilman).”