Alleged Comelec materials found in private residence in Davao
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/ 5 April) — Materials alleged to be from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) were found at a residential compound in Barangay Buhangin, Davao City on Friday afternoon.
Davao City Police Office spokesperson Hazel Caballero Tuazon confirmed the report Saturday afternoon to the media, saying a barangay administrator from Rosalina 3 personally reported to the Buhangin Police Station around 2:00 p.m. Friday.
Tuazon said the items included WiFi transmitters and solar panels purportedly sent by Comelec Manila, and were found stored at a property along Santol Street, Purok Santo Niño, Dumanlas, Buhangin.
She said the materials of still unknown quantity were said to be intended for distribution to barangays in the Davao Region.
The house belongs to a certain Ruby Jean Apolinario. Police said in their spot report that a relative of her daughter-in-law, who reportedly won the bidding to serve as the storage provider, “requested assistance to temporarily store the said equipment at her (Apolinario) residence.”
“Their group reportedly won the bid, and they were still looking for a location where the equipment could be temporarily stored, so they placed it there temporarily,” Tuazon said in the vernacular in a phone interview Saturday.
Meanwhile, Barangay Kagawad Larry Tatad confirmed in a radio interview on iFM Davao Saturday morning that the items were discovered inside the residence owned by the Apolinario family.
Tatad said that during a video call with Ruby Jean Apolinario, she explained that no warehouse had agreed to a short-term lease, that’s why they decided to temporarily store the equipment in her home.
Apolinario said the equipment were scheduled for distribution on April 15, he added.
However, Tatad also said that the residents were suspicious of the repeated presence of an L300 van in the area, allegedly attempting to retrieve the stored materials.
Lawyer Gay Enumerables, Comelec-Region XI Assistant Regional Election Director, has yet to respond to MindaNews’ query about the presence of those materials in a private property.
The State-run Philippine News Agency reported that ballot boxes for Region XI were already delivered in the city last April 3.
The report quoted Enumerables as saying that because the city does not have a big storage area, the DCPO offered their own vacant storage area to temporarily store the ballot boxes.
“Those were just ballot boxes, that’s nothing, I mean ballot boxes, at the start of voting, it will be shown to the people that they are empty,” Enumerables said in the vernacular. (Ian Carl Espinosa/MindaNews)
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