Leyte Samar Daily Express
TACLOBAN CITY – Effective Monday next week, all elections officials in the region, to include its top two officials, would be relieved from their present posts.
This was bared by lawyer Felicisimo Embalsado, assistant regional director of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), who would be reassigned to Region 6(Western Visayas).
Embalsado, in turn, would be replaced by lawyer Veronico Petalcorin who is currently the Comelec assistant regional director for Central Visayas.
Current Comelec Regional Director Jose Nick Mendros would be assigned to the Cordillera Autonomous Region(CAR). Mendros oversaw the conduct of the May 2010 elections in the region, which was described to be “generally peaceful.”
Aside from Mendros and Embalsado, all the six provincial elections supervisors and city and municipal elections officers would be reassigned to their new posts.
However, all the provincial elections supervisors and city and municipal elections officers would also be reassigned within the region, unlike in the case of Mendros and himself, Embalsado said.
“We will follow the order just like good soldiers. Anyway, we will take our new assignments as a sort of a vacation,” Embalsado said, trying to take the order from their central office light.
The reassignments of all elections officials in the region as well as in other regions would take effect starting this Monday and is to end by June 12, 2013.
Embalsado said that the movement of Comelec officials in the country is to ensure that the conduct of the May 2013 elections would be “credible.”
“It is meant to make the conduct of elections to be more credible. We cannot avoid public perception that due to familiarity of election officials and the candidates, the result (of the balloting) would be affected,” Embalsado said.
It was learned that the current elections supervisor of Leyte, Sabino Mejarito, would be assigned to Biliran whose current provincial elections supervisor, Richard Japzon would take his place.
Meantime, the elections supervisor of Southern Leyte, Antonio Gulay, Jr., would take the place of Andrew Bido who is the current provincial elections supervisor of Northern Samar.
Bido would take the post to be vacated of Gulay.
Samar provincial elections supervisor, Ma. Corazon Montallana, would be reassigned to Eastern Samar. The current provincial elections supervisor of Eastern Samar, Juan Bautista Beato, would take Montallana’s post.
Samar, of all the six provinces of the region, is considered to be an area of concern or a “priority area” due to occurrence of elections-related violence and the presence of partisan armed groups and even the rebel group, the New People’s Army.
Here in Tacloban, its present city elections officer, Rosemarie Polistico, would be reassigned to Ormoc City whose current elections official, Karen Cahipo, would be assign here in the city.
By: JOEY A. GABIETA, Staffwriter
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