Premature campaigning

The automation of the 2010 elections is a step in the right direction to insure that the results are accurate and will be known in a matter of hours. But it does not necessarily insure that the winners are the best and the wisest choices of the electorate. More important than automation is the education of our voters in making the right choices. Our election laws look adequate enough for this purpose. The problem however is that they are more honored in breach than in observance especially by the candidates who easily find loopholes that enable them to go around these laws.

Past elections have convinced candidates for any elective position that they can win in the election by simply making themselves known; by publicizing themselves and being constantly seen and heard by the people so that on Election Day their names are easily recalled or, now that our elections are automated, they are readily “clicked” by the voters. Their models are obviously Erap and all the other celebrities who ran and won in previous elections simply because their names have become part and parcel of almost every household.

Hence prospective candidates in the coming elections are now resorting to all means of acquiring greater exposure in all forms of media of communications. Even before filing their certificates of candidacy, they are already cluttering street posts and public walls with campaign posters and clogging the air-lanes and TV screens with campaign ads promoting themselves by means of gimmicks and propaganda that merely exploits the voters’ ignorance and gullibility.

All these would be candidates are spending hundreds of millions or billions of pesos to promote themselves as “champions of the poor” obviously because they know that the poor in this country comprises the biggest block of votes and are easily swayed by many other considerations than their qualifications and programs of government for the common good.

Two of these aspirants for the presidency, Villar and Binay are investing so much money in unabashedly peddling their “rags to riches” stories through expensive ads that will surely send them back to the poor house; and they want and expect us to believe that they are doing all these things in order to gain power purely for public service and not for recovering and increasing the return on their “investment”. This is clearly an insult to the electorate’s intelligence especially considering the highly questionable manner they acquired their wealth. Roxas on the other hand has no such story to tell as he belongs to the old rich so that he sounds more credible in championing the cause of the poor. But his huge expenditure still cannot be disconnected to commission of corruption once in power.

The media “infomercials” of several cabinet members who are eyeing some elective posts these coming elections are however more scandalous and repugnant. They are using public funds to promote themselves and they justify such use in the guise of promoting and informing the people of their works and the accomplishments of their respective departments. If their accomplishments are really outstanding, they need not advertise them for the best advertisements are the outstanding works themselves. So Fernando, Puno, Teves, Ebdane, Lapus and Duque should cease those “infomercials” right away or prove that the funds they use are not public funds. Otherwise, Senator Santiago should make good her threat of charging them before the Ombudsman.

While Vice President Noli de Castro is also a cabinet member appearing on TV ads, those ads are strictly not in the category of the infomercials of the other cabinet members. In the first place, said ads have been ongoing for so many years already that it cannot be connected to the coming election campaign only. Secondly VP de Castro is actually promoting the housing loan program of his department and not his accomplishments. So he is not promoting himself but the services of his department that has evidently produce good results as records show. Indeed even before he entered politics, he has already been a talent appearing in ads and charging talent fees. So it can even be said that his appearance in those government ads has helped in minimizing expenses by way of talent fees.

But whatever may be the nature of those ads and posters now sprouting, and regardless of the source of the funds used in airing and publishing them, the bare fact is that those appearing therein are already campaigning even before the start of the campaign period which is in clear violation of our election laws. The fact that they have not yet filed their certificate of candidacy is merely a clever way of going around the law and defeating its very purpose. Such justification is precisely the very reason for them to refrain from coming out with those ads and posters. It is so unfair to the other aspirants who want to strictly follow the law by refraining from airing ads and putting up posters before the campaign period.

More importantly, this premature campaigning with its huge expenses is another way of evading the limitation on the amount of campaign expenses. Since they are supposedly incurred before the filing of the certificate of candidacy and before the actual campaign period, these undeclared candidates will surely claim that they are not, strictly speaking, part of the campaign expenses.

To be sure, these anomalous practices have been going on even in the past elections. Apparently the Comelec has not done anything to stop them precisely because it is stymied by the loopholes in the law cleverly used by these aspirants. For the coming elections, the Comelec can still do something about it by warning all these people to stop their premature campaigning under pain of disqualification. If the Comelec will not move, then the next best thing to do is to list down all these violators and conduct an intensive campaign among voters not to vote for any of them in the coming elections. Otherwise, we will have the same kind of government we now have — a government fond of going around rather than strictly observing our laws. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)