By Froilan Gallardo
Special Correspondent
IT is still more than 15 days to the filing of candidacy for the 2022 presidential, senatorial and local elections but the election fever here has already gone to the boiling point here.
Huge tarps of the presidential daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, have mushroomed in every street leading to the Lanao del Sur provincial capitol compound here.
“Sara Tano (we are with Sara),” the tarps read.
Not to be outdone, small tarps of her presumed political rival, Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno, also dotted the landscape here — some mischievously placed beside the tarps of Duterte.
While political tarps among local candidates have yet to appear on the streets, rumors are circulating of local politicians preparing their war chests for the local elections to buy votes, commit fraud and violence.
“The going rate right now is P15 thousand to P20,000 for every voter in small municipalities with fewer voting population,” Drieza Liningding, head of the Marawi Consensus Group said.
Liningding said the war chest of local politicians could run to P1 billion if you run for governor for the province. The budget would be smaller in elective posts for the municipalities, he said.
He said with Covid-19 restrictions limiting face-to-face campaigning, local politicians would resort to vote-buying in the coming 2022 elections.
The Commission on Elections considers Lanao del Sur with 537,791 registered voters in 2020, “an election hot spot” during every election.
Conflict Alert, an international conflict monitoring NGO, said its 2019 report that vote-buying always fueled election violence.
During the 2019 senatorial and local elections, the Conflict Alert reported vote-buying ranging from P300 to a high of P3,000 in Marawi City and different municipalities in Lanao del Sur.
Aside from vote-buying, the remnants of the Dawlah Islamiyah Maute terror group could pose a major threat to the 2022 elections.
Brig. Gen. Jose Marie Cuerpo, commanding general of the Army 103rd Infantry Brigade said they received reports that the Maute terror group would sell their services to the politicians in the coming elections.
“This is a strong possibility since the Maute groups no longer have the international support that (has) given them firearms and money,” Cuerpo said.
“Supporting local politicians in exchange for money and guns is the next step for them,” he added.
Cuerpo said the Maute group had previous experience of supporting local politicians before they attacked Marawi in 2017.
The remnants of the Dawlah Islamiyah Maute group numbered around 20 to 30 fighters and are being led by Faharudin Hadji Satar alias Abu Zacaria.
Cuerpo said the militants operate across the mountain ranges of Pualas town in Lanao del Sur to Tangcal town in Lanao del Sur.
He said the militants would pose a major threat to the coming elections.
