IPIL, Zamboanga Sibugay – If the national government cannot provide them necessary security, thousands of public elementary school teachers in Western Mindanao (Region 9), Basilan and Sulu will not report to their respective polling precincts for the May 2010 elections.

This was declared by some local teacher-leaders in the wake of recent series of kidnappings by rebel groups of mentors which was capped by the abduction and beheading last week of Sulu elementary school principal Gabriel Canizares.

Abelardo Brutas Jr., secretary general of the Teachers Organization of the Philippines-Public Sector (TOPPS), noted here recently that the increasing number of kidnapping of educators in Mindanao “is becoming alarming.”

“If the government continues to ignore our call for appropriate security, we have no recourse but to boycott the coming political exercise,” Brutas said.

Since the start of the school year, he said, at least nine public school mentors in Zamboanga Peninsula and the island provinces of Sulu and Basilan have been abducted by rebel groups, Brutas, a teacher of the Zamboanga City High School (Main) said.

Aside from Canizares, Brutas identified the previously seized tutors as Jocelyn Enriquez, Noemi Mandi and Jocelyn Inion who were snatched by speedboat-riding armed men while going home onboard a motorized banca from the Bangkaw-Bangkaw Elementary School to the poblacion of Naga in Zamboanga Sibugay.