Ecija cops clueless on poll chief's grenade siege

BONGABON, Nueva Ecija , Philippines  – Police continue to face a blank wall on the motive and the identity of the suspect in last Wednesday’s grenade attack on the election officer of this town.

Senior Superintendent Ricardo Marquez, provincial police director, said that the local police are still trying to establish the motive behind the grenade attack on the house of municipal election officer Pacifico Gijapon.

Marquez said it would be premature to conclude that the attack was politically or election-related.

Gijapon, 62, was watching television with his wife and children in the house in Barangay Sinipit here Wednesday night when an unidentified motorcycle-riding man stopped in front of his house and tossed the hand grenade which exploded and destroyed its wall and shattered the windows.

No one was hurt in the attack, the third such incident since Oct. 26 when suspects strafed with .45 caliber pistols the houses of Andy Canati, barangay chairman of San Roque, the president of the Association of Barangay Captains in Bongabon and Antonio Alejo, barangay chairman of Barangay Palomaria.

String of violence

Marquez said Senior Inspector Armando Santiago, Bongabon police station commander, twice offered to provide security escorts to Gijapon but the latter refused.

“Gijapon said he would evaluate the incident if there is a need for him to get security escorts. Anyway, he said he would request to be transferred to another assignment,” he quoted Gijapon as telling Santiago.

Mayor Amelia Gamilla said it was the first time such string of violence erupted at the on-set of the election season in the town.

Gamilla of the Bagong Lakas ng Nueva Ecija, widow of the late ex-mayor Jimmy Gamilla, is running for reelection against Ricardo Padilla, a retired police general, who is running under the newly formed Unang Sigaw Partido ng Pagbabago of Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali.

The mayoral race in this town is expected to be hotly contested as it pits a member of a long-entrenched political clan against a vocal critic who openly advocated reforms.