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Fields Of Fire In North, Political Motive Involved?
posted (May 18, 2015)
There's a huge story coming out of the north tonight - and it involves high stakes politics and the always-volatile sugar industry. The backdrop to all of it is the adjustments in sugar quotas that we told you about on Friday - where certain branches are having their cane quotas cut substantially - and that is based on a survey of the North's cane fields. There is discontent in some quarters because one of the groups whose quota is going up is ASR/BSI.

And this evening, we received news of the deliberate burning of one of BSI's cane fields in the San Lorenzo area - which is a standard act of retaliation in the north. But, from there the story takes a radical twist. BSI Security guards who responded to the fire say they found two men in the area - they claim one of them is Efrain Alpuche - who is the personal security guard to PUP politician Ramon Monchie Cervantez. The BSI security says the two men opened fire on them - and then raced off. The security guards called police who reportedly set chase after a light Blue pickup truck. They caught it by Yo Creek and detained the two men including Alpuche.

They are being held at this hour pending investigation of arson and other charges.

We'll have more on this story tomorrow - and more on the sugar quotas later on in the news.

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