DUMAGUETE CITY – The police office in Negros Oriental expects a peaceful and orderly conduct of the May 13 local and national polls in this Central Visayas province.
According to Capt. Jul Mohammad Jamiri, deputy chief of the Provincial Operations and Planning Branch of the Negros Oriental Provincial Police Office (NOPPO), previous elections have showed that the province always held peaceful balloting, with no significant violent election-related incidents.
With the repeated pronouncements of anticipated peaceful elections here, the NOPPO has yet to come up with its final list of the so-called “election watch list of areas” (EWAS).
To date, no list has been released yet and it is the Police Regional Office 7 (PRO-7) that has to approve it, Jamiri said over the weekend.
“Meron na kaming list of proposed areas pero pabago bago kasi based on intelligence reports (we already have a list of proposed areas but it keeps on changing based on intelligence reports),” he said.
“Actually, we are peaceful, especially with political threats, intense political rivalry, plus we have sustained operations alongside the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines),” he said in broken English and the Cebuano dialect.
He even quoted Provincial Election Supervisor Eliseo Labaria as saying that he “thinks this would be the most peaceful election” in Negros Oriental.
Meanwhile, the Provincial Joint Security Coordinating (PJSCC) is scheduled to meet anytime soon within the month for updates in preparation for the coming midterm polls, he said.
It is expected that during the meeting, members of the PJSCC, to include the Commission on Elections, the PNP, and the AFP, among others, will be discussing important matters for the May elections, he added.
Capt. Jamiri also reiterated that the public plays an important role in ensuring that the elections will be clean, honest, peaceful, and orderly.
