Comelec and campaign material 2013
IS the Commission on Elections ( Comelec serious about the citizenry’s reporting illegal, outsize and out-of-place campaign material? They seem to be imploring us to do so, citing penalties that can be meted out to offenders, including disqualification from running. I would like to believe that this is reality but from previous electoral campaigns, it seems it may be wishful thinking all over again.
But since Hope Springs Eternal, let me cite the Comelec Batangas City where I was not more than three weeks ago. There you could not see the electric posts or the trees for the number of campaign placards attached to them. Not one by one as in one tree, one placard but in multiples. You might say condominium style, one on top of the other. There were the local candidates from governor to mayor to vice mayor to councilor. There were the national candidates, senato- rial aspirants, no less. All of them in technicolor and as big as the new sky (because they obliterated the sky of Nature).
So, I am now telling the Comelec, do not wait for a report from Batangas City; take a look now and do something. Presumably you have a Batangas City Comelec that can see? I know what comes next. That since it was not yet officially the campaign period (which began only last Tuesday, Febraury 12), all of these signs were innocuous and therefore not to be acted upon. They were not yet illegal, Comelec’s perennial excuse. Now they are, so what now?
Common sense says that if the first such infractions are taken down upon putting them up for being campaign material out of the campaign period, the message might be clearer about not overdoing the posting of campaign material. The spirit of the law is that public spaces must be protected, trees must not be assaulted by nails to hold up posters, the citizenry must be given space to see the neighborhood, the sky and natural elements of their environment rather than snowed under by what is the ugly, the self- serving and ultimately the violation of citizens’ rights. Another Comelec excuse is the lack of personnel to attend to this seemingly unimportant issue of campaign materials at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Unfortunately, it is in the law and must be obeyed not in the breach but in its timely implementation.
Why am I so harsh on this matter with the Comelec having its hands full? Because it pretends otherwise and calls attention to this matter requesting that citizens report with photos, email, text messages the infractions. There is probably an avalanche right now. Is there a Comelec division/section, task force for the single purpose of implementing the law on illegal campaign materials because they are located where the law forbids? There better be because they will have to cope with much as the surroundings get cluttered with candidate’s faces and messages.
Two elections ago (not the last one in 2010 but in 2007) I went down the Kennon Road from Baguio photographing all the campaign messages painted on rocks and walls of the winding mountain road. It was vandalism with impunity with white paint splashing names on rocks, walls, buttresses and whatever available
space that could be seen and withstand paint. At some effort and expense I sent the photographs to the Comelec Headquarters in Manila. I did get a letter saying thank you and that my complaint and photographs had been sent to the Baguio or Cordillera Comelec. That was the last I heard and as I went up the Kennon Road within the electoral campaign season the signs were still there as though mocking me for being a fool. That was why I felt then and now that Comelec was not serious about controlling campaign material.. Certainly dumping it to their local offices without a follow-up on results is farce.
The point is an iron hand is needed before, during and after the campaign period on the matter of electoral materials in public places. Now that Batangas City is burdened with their outsized, out-of-place and clearly illegal electoral materials despoiling the environment, what will Comelec do assuming it means to be sincere about its message, threats, invitations to report? Apparently, the usual manner is to send a message to the candidates in general to take down their campaign materials. That is one message to too many candidates. In turn, these candidates will profess innocence as to who put them up, they will deny it was them and the matter stops there So, is that the way to implement the law, to ask the very violators to do the implementation?
Again, so far, so bad on the rule of illegal campaign materials and the Comelec who calls our attention but does not pay attention.