Manila: Four people were killed and four wounded in fresh election violence in the Philippines when gunmen ambushed a mayoral candidate in the south of the country, a police general said yesterday.
The convoy of a pro-administration candidate came under heavy automatic gunfire in Maguindanao late on Friday, said Joel Goltiao, police chief in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The candidate's driver was killed in the initial burst of gunfire but three police officers guarding them fought back and killed three of the attackers.
Inquiry
The candidate was wounded in the leg, he said. "Our initial inquiry showed the attack was election-related," Goltiao told reporters, adding investigators were tracking down a group of gunmen behind the attack.
Goltiao said the largest Muslim separatist rebel group in the southern Philippines was known to be active in the area, but there were no indications the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was behind the ambush.
Since the election period began on January 14, national police said about 100 people have died in nearly 120 poll-related incidents of violence across the archipelago.
Bitter rivalry among local politicians, a trigger-happy culture and nearly 40 years of Muslim and communist insurgencies add to election tensions.
But police officials say the level of violence remained low this year compared to previous political contests even if the killings were expected to rise as the balloting on May 14 draws near.
In 2004 presidential elections, 189 died, while in 2001 local polls, 111 people were killed.
Fanned out
Yesterday, soldiers and armed police officers fanned out to half a dozen provinces where violence may erupt during the elections. The campaign period ends on May 12.
Security forces have set up road blocks and checkpoints and raided hideouts of suspected private armies to control movement illegal weapons and prevent violence.
Some 115,000 Philippine police went on full alert on Friday to secure the polls tomorrow.
National Security Adviser Norberto Quisumbing said there were no reports of terrorist groups planning to disrupt the polls.
Even as the campaign battle cry of fighting poverty can be heard throughout the Philippines, housewife Florentina Salvador says no candidate has set foot on the reeking garbage dump that she mines for salvageable junk.
She didn't expect anyone to visit the fly-infested seaside dump - fittingly called "Aroma" - to dirty their shoes and witness the squalor. At 50, she has seen so many campaign promises broken that she knows better than to have any hope as midterm elections near.
"They come and go but our lives have not changed," she said of aspiring politicians.
"We're still living off this garbage. People stay away because we smell," said Salvador, who wrapped her head with a grimy shirt topped with a cap to fend off the scorching sun.
Manila's shantytowns rarely see well-heeled politicians, except during election campaigns, when the slums become crucial battlegrounds for votes, as most of the Southeast Asian nation's 45 million registered voters are poor.
Candidates make a beeline to poverty-wracked neighbourhoods with plenty of promises and dole out shirts, caps, snacks, insurance coverage and cash - despite a ban on political gifts.
In the media ads of Congressman Prospero Pichay, now running for the Senate, poor people are quoted as saying they dream of being able to afford medicine, their own homes, to earn a decent living, to which he replies: "My dream is to fulfil your dreams." They've heard it all before.
The dusty road to Aroma was barely tread amid the electoral frenzy, though the sprawling dump in Manila's filthy pier district is just a 30-minute drive from the presidential palace.
Poverty has sparked bloody communist and Muslim separatist rebellions for decades in the country of 86 million.
