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Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Carlito Galvez said Monday the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan election is “very normal and peaceful”.

“For now we see that it is very normal and peaceful, that is why the Comelec ( Commission on Elections) is very elated. For the first time 100 percent more than 174,000 precincts were opened and it’s a very good report, encouraging report in a sense that the only high profile (case) that we see is the incident that happened in Agoo, La Union last May 12, as well as the incident in Basilan where four died,” he said in an interview in Camp Aguinaldo Monday.

“These are the only incidents that we can consider that is slightly (major), unlike before that we see in Lanao has dozens of casualties. At the same time we see that the good effort of our military and police on rido settlements had been emphasized during the planning of the pre-election preparation,” he added.

Galvez said the military has recorded a total of more than 40 violent incident occurred during the election period.

“As of this report, we have reported 42 reports of violent incident but the Comelec confirmed only seven are considered as the election-related violence and out of these, 13 killed out of seven confirmed incidents,” he said.

Galvez said even the precincts in the remote islands of the country were able to open.

“All the 174,000 precincts were all opened for the first time, 100 percent… with the help of our Comelec, PNP ( Philippine National Police) and AFP officials, Batanes, Pagasa and Turtle Island precincts were also opened for voting,” he said.

Galvez said the AFP has deployed more or less 30,000 soldiers and Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (Cafgu) members to help in securing the nationwide election.

“For our figures we have a total of more or less 30,000 people, 30,000 AFP, both the regular soldiers and Cafgus who were deployed throughout the country. We have 594 officers and 18,850 enlisted personnel...” he said. Robina Asido/DMS