MANILA — Malacañang has congratulated all duly elected officials in Monday’s 2018 barangay (village) and Sangguniang Kabataan (youth council) elections, the first under the Duterte administration.
“The Palace wishes to congratulate all the duly elected Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a Palace briefing Tuesday.
Roque also thanked the public for their full support and cooperation in ensuring that the elections were “relatively peaceful and orderly in all regions of the country.”
He said the National Election Monitoring Action Center in Camp Crame has recorded 47 cases of violence since the election period began on April 14, seven of which had been validated to be election-related.
Meanwhile, Roque said there was no serious threat monitored by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) with regards to the conduct of elections.
The AFP, however, laid out contingency measures, including the deployment of a sufficient number of specially trained and equipped AFP personnel in Comelec-identified threat areas.
Roque was among the Cabinet officials under the Duterte administration who voted during the barangay elections.
He cast his vote in Barangay White Plains in Quezon City together with his wife, former TV reporter Mylah Reyes-Roque.
President Rodrigo R. Duterte, however, opted to skip this year’s barangay elections, refusing to take sides with candidates who were all his supporters.
“Lahat ‘yung tumakbo, kaibigan ko (All the candidates are my friends). Almost all were my supporters during the last election,” he told reporters in Taguig City during his visit to the wake of the late former senator Edgardo Angara on Monday night.
“To erase all suspicions in the minds of people who really helped me along the way, sabi ko ‘ay ‘wag na lang, hindi na lang ako pupunta (I said, never mind, I won’t go),” he added. (Azer Parrocha/PNA)
