PUGO, La Union – Concerned and embattled residents of the town’s fourteen barangays appealed to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) central office to takeover the ongoing investigation by the task force against flying voters on the proliferation of alleged flying voters who successfully registered as voters in the locality, to ensure that the genuine voice of the will prevail during the conduct of the May 12, 2025 midterm elections.
Some officers of the Save Pugo Movement, an organization of bonafide residents of the municipality who are pushing for clean and honest elections, called on the Comelec to takeover the investigation because of the alleged partisan stand of the poll body’s provincial office when one of its officials issued a statement in the media that there were no flying voters in the municipality despite the obvious means employed by a politician in the second district to haul people from neighboring towns to have them registered as voters in the different barangays in cahoots with barangay officials concerned.
Earlier, the group filed charges of violation of the country’s election laws against some eleven punong barangays in the municipality for allegedly unscrupulously issuing barangay certificates to individuals who are not actually residents of the difference barangays which these individuals used in registering in the municipality as voters during the registration period from February to the end of September this year.
The complaint has already been considered by the poll body awaiting for its decision whether or not to suspend the concerned eleven punong barangays as part of the prescribed process in the conduct of the investigation on the matter.
The sources, who requested anonymity for personal and security reasons, allege that a politician from the province’s second district is behind the influx of suspected flying voters from the neighboring areas to the different barangays to advance the political interest of his relative who is aspiring for an elected position in the municipality. This relative is not even a resident of the locality but the intention is for them to annex the town to their area of influence in the said district.
According to the group, the investigating officials from the province’s election office should inhibit from conducting the necessary probe on the sudden surge of registered voters in some of the town’s barangays because they already issued premature statements that cast doubts on the credibility and integrity of the decision they may render on the matter.
Initially, the municipal election office disqualified more than 700 questionable registered voters during the Election Registration Board (ERB) hearing last October 15, 2024 but there are still thousands of registrants who are yet to be questioned in an appropriate legal forum.
The concerned residents have been alarmed following the sudden surge of registrants in some of the town’s major barangays during the registration period that prompted them to seek the appropriate legal remedies from legal personalities to abate the influx of flying voters that will derail the democratic exercise of free choice by legitimate residents of Pugo during the upcoming political exercise.
Pugo is a fifth-class municipality with over 14,00 voters but it suddenly increased by more than 4,000 voters as a result of the alleged influx of flying voters during the registration period. By Dexter A. See
