PIMENTEL COMMENDS ELECTION REGISTRAR
FOR PURGE OF 20,000 FLYING VOTERS IN CAGAYAN DE ORO

The field election supervisor in Cagayan de Oro City has been commended by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino ?Nene? Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) for cracking down on bogus voters in the city in a bold effort to make the May 14 elections as clean and credible as possible.

City election registrar Stalin Baguio was praised by Pimentel for cleansing the voters? list of about 20,000 flying voters.

Pimentel, who hails from Cagayan de Oro, said the existence of a huge number of flying voters has been the bane of the electoral process in the city for a long-time now but it was only Mr. Baguio who seized the initiative in striking them out from the masterlist of registered, qualified voters.

The lone senator from Mindanao said he himself personally verified and confirmed the existence of 20,000 flying voters and double registrants in the records of the Comelec-Cagayan de Oro office during the weeks preceding the May, 2001 elections.

Pimentel said there were even some teenagers who came forward, admitting that they were able to register as flying voters in Cagayan de Oro although they were residents of different towns of Misamis Oriental and nearby provinces like Lanao del Norte and Bukidnon.

He said the self-confessed flying voters even signified their willingness to testify before the Comelec or the Senate to reveal the truth behind the scam.

Pimentel said the admission of thousands of flying voters into the roster of qualified voters could not have been made possible without the connivance of corrupt Comelec officials with unscrupulous politicians and their political operators.

He said the investigation and purging of the fake and flying voters from the official list were foiled by highly-placed Comelec officials, both in Northern Mindanao and in the Comelec office in Manila, who were probably part of the election fraud syndicate responsible for the anomaly.

?That is why we are saying that election registrar Stalin Baguio achieved quite a feat in delisting some 20,000 flying voters from the official roster. This is a good example of sanitizing the voters list of spurious registrants which can be replicated in other areas,? Pimentel said.

The opposition leader also voiced suspicion that some top Cagayan de Oro political leaders had something to do with the listing of the flying voters which gave them an undue advantage over their opponents in past elections, enabling them to entrench themselves in power even if they no longer enjoyed the trust of majority of their constituents.