COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / July 9, 2012) – A female member of the Catholic election watchdog, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), was allegedly mauled by 7 women after she refused them to work as volunteers during the weeklong voters registration in the Muslim autonomous region in Mindanao.
Sahara Camarudin said she was attacked Sunday in the town of Buldon, where the women, some of them working at the Department of Social Welfare and Development, berated her for refusing to accept them as volunteers.
Camarudin said the women were closely identified with a political clan in Buldon town which was her basis for denying them to work as PPCRV volunteers.
“I am not afraid. I will still report for work,” she told ABS-CBN television.
It was not immediately whether the PPCRV would file charges against Camarudin’s attackers, but its head, Henrietta de Villa, has condemned the assault and told the woman to seek police assistance to protect her from further harm.
She said PPCRV does not accept volunteers who are identified with any politicians to join the registration activities, which aimed to cleanse the region’s 1.8 million registrants of illegal voters. But many PPCRV volunteers in the past were themselves involved in poll cheating in the Muslim autonomous region. (Mindanao Examiner)
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