MANILA, Philippines – Armed men torched P30,000 worth of campaign materials of a congressional bet in Mindoro province, police said Wednesday.
Senior Superintendent Sonny Ricablanca, Oriental Mindoro provincial police chief, said at least 10 armed men blocked a campaign truck of incumbent Pola Mayor Alex Aranas along the provincial road in Barangay Dulangan, Baco town.
Ricablanca said the armed men took all the campaign materials, including DVD players and Aranas’s campaign posters, from the truck and burned them.
He said that according to Aranas’s supporters, the armed men said they are members of the New People’s Army (NPA).
He said the armed men also looked for Aranas and told his supporters that they burned the campaign materials for the candidates’ refusal to pay campaign fee to the Communist movement.
Aranas, however, told radio dzMM that the harassment was politically motivated. He said he believes the gunmen are not NPA members.
The mayor has been abducted by the rebels twice in 2004 and 2007 for allegedly refusing to give in to the rebels’ extortion demands. — Report from Noel Alamar, radio dzMM
