Philippines bans guns ahead of elections

[Mid]

Philippines bans guns ahead of elections
Monday January 14, 2013



A 150-day ban on the carrying of firearms outside residences across the Philippines has begun to prevent violence that could erupt during May 13 elections in a country awash with weapons and plagued by a history of deadly poll rivalries.

Commission on Elections chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr said the ban, which started Sunday and ends June 12, suspends all permits to carry firearms in public areas and exempts only top officials, on-duty troops and police, and people facing threats. Violators could be jailed up to six years.

Election and police officials staged a march in metropolitan Manila and inspected security checkpoints to dramatise their call for peaceful mid-term elections - an often-futile goal in a country where rivalry for power among old and new political clans has been blamed for electoral violence and fraud in past years.

In the country's worst elections-related violence, 58 people, including 32 media workers, were killed by more than 100 gunmen in a 2009 massacre blamed on a political rivalry between two powerful clans in southern Maguindanao province.

Army-backed police contingents began to enforce the ban on guns and armed bodyguards, especially in about 800 towns in 15 provinces, including Maguindanao, considered security hotspots because of a recent history of election violence or the presence of private armed groups, Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said.

Police have identified at least 60 privately maintained militias across the country, along with 43 criminal gangs, which could be tapped by candidates in the elections, Sarmiento said, adding that a government crackdown was under way to hunt down and dismantle those groups.

About 50 million Filipinos have registered to elect more than 18,000 national and local government officials, including nearly 300 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, on May 13.

As in the 2010 presidential election, optical counting machines will be used to tally votes to speed up the notoriously slow hand-counting of ballots that fostered cheating, violence and unrest in the past, Sarmiento said.

But such automation cannot prevent vote-buying and intimidation, he said.

'There's danger because of the armed groups,' Sarmiento said. 'My other fear is there might be massive vote-buying.'

skynews.com.au

[gaysexbyproxy]

Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna be effective and enforceable.

"Sir, is that a gun you have there? I'm going to need you to just hand it over to me. Nice and slow, thanks..."

[Davis Knowlton]

Not like this is anything new. They've instituted a six-month long gun ban during every election year in the two decades I've lived here. Never noticed it made any difference in the crime rate.

[bobo746]

[Rural Surin]

Not like this is anything new. They've instituted a six-month long gun ban during every election year in the two decades I've lived here. Never noticed it made any difference in the crime rate.

Does this ban include the American "advisors" and mercs that have resurfaced in recent years to help extract the make-believe boogiemen in the south...?

[Davis Knowlton]

^Covered under "diplomatic status".

[chassamui]

make-believe

How would you know ....oh wait .... that's your specialist subject isn't it jeffrey.

[Rural Surin]

^Covered under "diplomatic status".

Naturally...