A Luzon-wide brownout hit millions of households and commercial establishments in Metro Manila and other provinces in the central and northern Luzon, at exactly 1:51 pm of Wednesday last week.
The said outage was caused by the unexpected power shutdown of six major power plants in Luzon. It started with the tripping of the Binan-Calaca Line in Batangas, and resulted to a domino effect in other power plants.
Based on data from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the power outage lasted for more than 10 hours, delayed further because of the time needed for the power restoration processes.
Aside from being the point of backlash from some politicians about the outage being a ‘dry-run’ of what will happen tomorrow, May 13, the widespread brownout may have also resulted to an increase of election-related crimes in the country, especially in Luzon.
Campaigning with violence
Several crimes were reported during the massive brownout. Two were pronounced dead, and another two were injured in the exchange of fire between the supporters of the two mayoral candidates of Paugpud, Ilocos Norte. A campaign supporter in Isabela was also found dead after being shot by five anonymous armed men during the lightless interval. Down south in the province of Cavite, a relative of a running vice mayor was also shot during the brownout.
Supporters of the candidates at the local level were during the brownout found with and allegedly reported to the Philippine National Police (PNP) for carrying guns despite the efforts of the PNP to implement the pre-election gun ban. Numerous other election-related cases were recorded on that day but are still under investigation as of press time.
According to the PNP, an average of two persons have died per week due to election-related crimes since October 2012. The earliest of these incidents date back to the first day of the filing of Certificate of Candidacy, October 1, 2012.
Shootings topped the list of election-related violent incidents. The PNP revelead that almost 99 percent of shooting incidents reported this year were perpetrated using unlicensed guns. From January 13 to May 5 there were already 88 victims involved in the 58 election-related incidents. This figure, however, is lower than the election-related cases during the May 2010 elections, says the PNP.
Senatoriables speak up
In a recent interivew with The LaSallian, some senatoriables have expressed their views regarding the escalation of crimes and violence in the country.
Makabayan’s Senatorial bet, Teddy Casiño, described election violence and crimes in the Philippine context, where landlords compete with each other and exhaust all means to asset themselves and to manipulate the process for their advantage.
Casiño notes that these incidents show traces of a “defective political system, where only a few political clans or warlords play the game, and they usually use deception and violence to maintain themselves in power.”
Meanwhile, Richard Gordon of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) labelled the candidates who resort to crime and violence as “very premature, title oriented and face oriented.” He says, “It tells our society that we [are not concerned with serving] our poor country, we serve for the title.”
But for Mitos Magsaysay of the same political party, these crimes and violence are a challenge and a wake-up call to the administration, especially to the PNP and all the law enforcement agencies. She also believes that the voting public should start to engage in intelligent discourse during the election period, and that they should fight for their advocacies “with their mouths, and not with their guns.”
Casiño mentioned in the interview that voters must resist voting for candidates who employ violence in campaigning. He asserted that the best antidote to the electorate’s own guns, goons, and gold to counter those of the violent campaigners, would be to properly exercise their right to vote, and be aware that there is a way to have a peaceful, orderly, and honest elections.
