The Philippine National Police (PNP) has vowed to crush all the existing private armed groups across the country before the scheduled May 10 elections, saying it has already lined up the operational plans in order to achieve the goal.

“That is our aim, to get rid of all these private armed groups (before the May 10 elections),” said Director General Jesus Verzosa, PNP chief, in a chance interview after the New Year’s call with his commanders in Camp Crame Wednesday morning.

Verzosa would not say the exact number of politicians’ goons that they are targeting to dismantle but said they will have a clear picture of those that will be subjected in their operations after today’s meeting with officials of the Commission on Elections and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

But he revealed that they have actually started their operation by dismantling some units of the police auxiliary, Special CAFGU Active Auxiliary and the Civilian Volunteer Organization which were all converted as private goons of local political warlords such as in the case in Maguindanao.

“We are still doing some validation, tomorrow (Thursday) we’ll be announcing after the finalization of the number of private armed groups,” said Verzosa.

Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Ronaldo Puno also expressed confidence of their success in busting all private goons in the country in the next few weeks, particularly the SCAA and police auxiliary units.

“They are all listed, we know who they are, we know what we are going to do,” said Puno.

The official explained that the first thing they would do is to assess whether or not there is still enough reason to maintain the existence of civilian volunteer fighters in certain areas.

“What we are going to do is to determine if the threat for which they were organized is still there or not like the communist and Moro rebels. If there are already none, then there is no more reason to maintain them,” said Puno.

As to the purely private goons, Puno said they would be banking on the strict implementation of the total gun ban nationwide as well as the declaration of the hot spot of some areas.