Killings of Camarines Sur militiamen linked to polls

LEGAZPI CITY , Philippines  – The recent brutal killings by rebels of two militiamen and burning of two heavy equipment in Camarines Sur, owned by a big construction firm which provided a well-oiled campaign to a Bicol-based party-list is being linked to the result of the Party-list elections which showed a drastic drop in the votes for progressive groups, particularly Bayan Muna.

Quoting intelligence reports, Lt. Col. Leoncio Cirunay, commander of the Philippine Army’s 22nd Infantry Battalion based in Camarines Sur, said the New People’s Army rebels killed the Cafgus and torched the two graders used in a road construction in Barangay Taisan, Bula, Camarines Sur on Wednesday evening, to protest the winning of the Ako Bicol Party-list, whose board chairman, billionaire businessman Elizalde Co is also the owner of the construction firm, Sunwest Development Corp.

“Ako Bicol Party-list has dominated the polls this year and the terrorist rebels blamed it for the sudden decline of the supporters who voted for the party-list organizations which were campaigned for, by the NPAs in the Bicol Region.”

Bicol Army spokesman Major Harold Cabunoc quoted Cirunay in an official statement as saying.

“This is one of the reasons cited by my informant why they have targeted the equipment of Sunwest Corp., aside from their continuous refusal to pay the demanded extortion money from private contractors,” Cirunay said.

Greg Banares, Bicol spokesman of the National Democratic Front (NDF), had already clarified through radio interviews here that the killing of the CAFGUs and the burning of the equipment were punishment for the construction firm’s defiance of their so-called “revolutionary policies.” He did not elaborate. Banares also said that they killed militiamen Edwin Belando,47, and Stanly Portugues,36, because they were armed and being used as security escorts of Sunwest, an allegation belied by Cabunoc, saying the two were unarmed and on off-duty at the time, and merely passing by the area when grabbed and killed by the rebels.

Reports here continued to persist that Bayan Muna Partylist, which usually topped in Bicol in the past elections, dropped drastically in this year’s election due to Ako Bicol’s joining the Party-list race and got close to a million votes in Bicol alone.

Ako Bicol officials here refused to answer when sought for comment by The STAR.