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THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is badgering
law enforcement agencies to resolve immediately the gruesome murder
of its officials who occupied sensitive positions in the poll body.
Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said
Thursday that they have informed law enforcement agencies that the
poll body will not allow the murder cases to remain unsolved.
Melo, a former Supreme Court
Associate Justice, said that he already called the head of the
National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to give its uttermost
attention on the cases.
“I have called Director
[Nestor] Mantaring of the NBI and I have told to him that we have to
get some results, we can’t let these [killings] remain
unsolved,” Melo said in an interview.
The Comelec chairman said that
the NBI director will see what can be done to immediately solve the
latest murder case, which at the moment is being handled by the
Manila Police District.
Melo took oath of his office as
new chairman of the poll body last Tuesday, a day after Lawyer Wynne
Asdala, acting head of the Comelec Legal Department, was shot dead
by two motorcycle-riding gunmen.
He promised to give special
attention to the killings of its officials, which he said forced him
to assume the post much earlier.
Asdala who succumbed from a
gunshot wound on his right shoulder while undergoing treatment at a
nearby hospital, is the second ranking Comelec official to be shot
and killed in less than six months.
Asdala’s predecessor, Lawyer
Aliodeng Dalaig was shot and killed by still unidentified gunman
after coming out from a hotel that he frequents in Ermita, Manila
last November 10, 2007.
At the time of his death, Asdala,
a seasoned election lawyer, was handling around 70 cases involving
election protests and complaints, some of which he inherited from
Dalaig.
--Anthony Vargas
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