Nearly 7,000 barangays in the country were considered as “election areas of concern” in the upcoming barangay elections on October 28, police said.
There were 6,904 villages or 16 percent of the country’s total number of barangays identified as “election areas of concern, while there were 156 other villages tagged as “election areas of immediate concern,” PNP director for Intelligence Police Director Cipriano Querol said at a command conference at Camp Crame on Thursday.
They were focused in the areas of Masbate, Compostela Valley, Central Mindanao, Bicol, and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“The parameters in considering an area as election area of concern are the existence of intense political rivalry, and of course, if the area is affected and threatened by threat groups,” Querol said.
Checkpoints were established, as well as the implementation of Oplan Katok, where search warrants against suspected personalities and confiscation of loose firearms were implemented as part of their operations.
Private armed groups also went down to 25, from 55 monitored armed groups during the midterm elections in May.
