PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 15, 2013) – A government teacher, who rejected a bribe to rig the recently concluded village elections, was shot dead in a daring broad daylight attack in the southern Philippine province of Zamboanga Sibugay, police said Friday.
Police said Gina Yosores, 45, was shot in the head with a .45-caliber pistol in the village of Danlungan in Buug town. The alleged killer has been identified by authorities as 19-year old Freddie Puerto, who escaped after the shooting.
Yosores’s husband said his wife, a teacher at the Danlungan Elementary School, served as an election inspector during the October 28 polls and told him that she had been offered a bribe by an unidentified to manipulate the results of the elections, but rejected this.
It was unknown whether the victim had reported to authorities or her supervisor the bribe offer to rig the poll results.
Police now suspect that the killing could be connected to the past elections. No other details were made available by the police about the killer, but authorities launched an operation to track down the gunman.
“Police theorized that the incident is election-related. The Buug Municipal Police Station is conducting manhunt operation for the arrest of the suspect while appropriate charges will be filed in court against him,” said Chief Inspector Ariel Huesca, a regional police spokesman.
Teachers are always at risk in every election in the Philippines, particularly in the southern region due to threats and intimidation by armed goons or private armies by some politicians and warlords. And despite their low pay and allowances, state teachers bear the brunt of election violence which is a deadly characteristic of Philippine polls. (Mindanao Examiner)
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