CEBU. A mayoralty bet in Santa Fe town has been killed right in front of the local Commission on Elections office in Cebu City yesterday.

The fatality was identified as former Sante Fe mayor Rogelio Illustrisimo who died from his wounds after two gunmen shot him at close range before escaping past 9 a.m., police said.

According to police they were investigating the motive for the Wednesday morning attack, but said it apparently was connected to local politics.

The police report added that the former mayor attended a disqualification case filed against him by mayoralty candidate Domingo Zaspa on the grounds of threat and intimidation.

A man is being held for questioning, but it was not clear whether he was one of the suspects, officers said.

The victim was a candidate for mayor in the town of Santa Fe in Cebu's Bantayan Island and there has been heated rivalry for the post.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last week ordered the armed forces to help police dismantle "private armies" employed by local politicians amid a spate of vendetta killings ahead of the May 14 mid-term vote.

Illustrisimo is the 26th victim of hired guns this election season, although that is still below the toll for the 2004 presidential elections -- when 148 deaths were recorded -- and the 2001 mid-term polls with 111 killings.

On Monday, the mayor of the northern city of San Carlos, Julian Resuello, died at a Manila hospital where he was being treated after being ambushed at the weekend.
Last week, a town council candidate and a policeman were also killed in an ambush by suspected political rivals in the town of Jaen in northern Nueva Ecija province.

Seventeen others were wounded, including three policemen, leading the election commission to place the province under its security watch to prevent further bloodshed.