ELECTION officials in northern Mindanao already apprehensive following the killings of two Commission on Elections officers in Lanao del Norte and Sultan Kudarat provinces, are asking for police security protection, officials said.
Commission on Election Region 10 Director Renato Magbutay said they have told the Philippine National Police to provide police officers to all election officials assigned to cities and towns in Northern Mindanao, especially in the town of Nunungan whose assigned election officer, Mark Orlando Vallecer II, was killed in an ambush in Salvador town, Lanao del Norte last Monday.
Without the police security, Magbutay said he believed election officials in Region 10 would be reluctant to serve in the May 2025 elections.
“Our election officers are already apprehensive because of the death of Vallecer and the other Comelec official in Sultan Kudarat province,” Magbutay said.
Magbutay said he met with PNP officials in Region 10 to evaluate the security risks of the election officers in the region—election officials who already received death threats would be provided with police security.
Vallecer, 51, election officer of Nunungan town was killed by two gunmen who ambushed him after he attended a meeting in Salvador town in Lanao del Norte last Monday.
The other Comelec official killed was Janeco Allan Dionaldo Pandoy, election assistant of Isulan, Sultan Kudarat last November 23.
The two election officers were killed in two days.
Salvador town police chief Major Teodorico Gallego said the gunmen fired eight shots at the red Hyundai Accent car of Vallecer as it slowed down on a rough section of the road in Barangay Curva Miagao.
“But one bullet that pierced the left side of the body of Vallecer was fatal,” Gallego said.
Gallego said they are looking for CCTV cameras along the road between Nunungan and Salvador if they captured the image of the gunmen who fled the scene.
