Comelec to put 2 regional offices on Negros Island

BACOLOD CITY – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is setting up separate regional offices for the newly-created Negros Island Region (NIR) in Dumaguete City, the capital of Negros Oriental, and in this city instead of just opening one for the region in Negros Occidental.

Director Lionel Marco Castillano of Comelec NIR said the main office would be in Dumaguete as the poll body’s chair, George Erwin Garcia, instructed him to hold office in that city for now to focus on the electoral security concerns in Negros Oriental.

Castillano said the Comelec regional office to be set up in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental’s economic center, would be headed by Comelec NIR lawyer Cindy Ballesteros.

While the killings in Negros Oriental did not happen during the election period, Castillano said “we know that they were a result of the elections.”

“We are working for peaceful elections. (Polls) marred by violence are not good for the economy, the people and the country,” he said.

“We don’t want failure elections. That is why we are focusing on Negros Oriental,” he added, referring to the midterm elections set in May next year.

Degamo’s murder

Negros Oriental’s peace and order drew attention following the killing of former Gov. Roel Degamo and nine other persons inside the governor’s residential compound in Pamplona town on March 4, 2023.

Eleven suspects were arrested had linked then Negros Oriental Rep. Arnolfo Teves to the massacre. Many of the suspects, however, recanted their confessions after they were provided with lawyers.

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Teves, who was expelled by the House of Representatives last year after he fled the country, repeatedly denied the accusations. He was arrested by authorities while playing golf in Timor-Leste on March 21 this year based on a red alert notice by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). Efforts by the Philippine government to bring him back the country was still ongoing.

For the elections scheduled in May 2025, “the chairman wants our services brought closer to the people. That is why we have satellite registration (of voters) in malls and mountain barangays,” Castillano said.

The poll body’s Register Anywhere Program will end on Aug. 31 and the regular registration of voters on Sept. 30.

“We urge people to register now and not wait for the deadline rush”, he said.