President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the National Security Council (NSC) created a high level commission  to dismantle private armed groups in response to the Maguindanao massacre and in an effort to avert other election-related violence.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said this “will give focus and emphasis and put more teeth and impetus to the President’s desire to ensure a fair, clean, honest and orderly elections in 2010.”

Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno added that the creation of the commission will insure transparency in the dismantling of private armed groups since it would involve the different institutions of government.

Remonde said the commission will be headed by a retired justice of the Supreme Court, whom he refused to name “pending notification and acceptance (of our invitation).”

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