Cotabato mayor, husband held for violating gun ban

North Cotabato’s provincial police will file today charges of violating the barangay elections gun ban against the mayor of Kabacan and her husband, implicated in the killing on Tuesday of a representative of a non-government organization.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, chairman of the Provincial Peace and Order Council, said a team led by North Cotabato’s police director, Supt. Odelon Ramoneda, sent to Kabacan to investigate on the killing of Rico Sumatra inside Kabacan’s municipal government compound, seized from Mayor Luzviminda Tan and her husband, Jojo Tan, a .380 pistol and a customized cal. 40 S&W handgun, respectively, in a surprise inspection the other day.

"Initially, it appeared that these firearms were not covered by an exemption for the firearm ban imposed by the Commission on Elections in connection with the forthcoming synchronized barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections," Piñol told Catholic station dxMS here yesterday.

Ramoneda and his men were dispatched by the PPOC to Kabacan, locked in political tension since the May 11, 2001 polls, to probe deeper into the alleged shootout in the premises of the town hall between Tan’s group and partisans identified with the town’s former mayor, Wilfredo Bataga, which resulted in the death of Sumatra.

An earlier peace covenant between Tan and Bataga’s camp restrains the lady mayor from entering Kabacan’s municipal compound pending the resolution of the electoral case between her and the former mayor.

The poll body had invalidated its earlier proclamation of Bataga as Kabacan’s elected mayor, ruling that the May 11, 2001 race was rigged in his favor.

The Comelec installed Tan as Bataga’s replacement late last year, a move strongly opposed by the ousted mayor and his followers.

Bataga’s camp have been displaying since Wednesday Sumatra’s remains at the middle of a national highway traversing Kabacan’s town proper in protest of his death.

The Tans have denied any involvement in the killing of Sumatra.