Punchline
The “secret” COMELEC rule
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
Candidates beware!
There is a new and little known Comelec rule that hangs like a Damocles sword over your heads that can lead to your disqualification.
Curiously, the local Comelec officials in the province are ominously silent about its recent rule that says it can disqualify candidates who indiscriminately post propaganda materials on electric posts and trees, government structures and in public areas not identified as common poster areas in violation of the law.
By keeping mum about it, our Comelec officials are either hoping they won’t have to do extra work or are only waiting for an opportunity to spring a surprise on candidates considered “enemies” of the big bosses at the right time, waving the rule over their heads, using the dictum “Ignorance of the law excuses no one.” How convenient.
But still thanks to the inaction of our “blind” Comelec officials, our towns and cities have become big dirty common poster areas.
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To make candidates fully accountable, the Comelec (through its local offices) is supposed to formally notify each candidate whose posters and streamers are found illegally pasted on electric posts, strung up on trees, etc., directing the candidate to remove his/her posters within three days or face legal consequences to include disqualification. In other words, it’s principally the candidates’ responsibility, not the police and Comelec, to remove their illegally pasted posters at their own expense.
To put more teeth to this enforcement, candidates are presumed to know about the illegal “postering” activities of their supporters 3 days upon receipt of the notice of violation. This provision was defined ostensibly to counter the candidate’s usual alibi that he is not aware and neither can he control activities of his unidentified supporters.
Believe you me, Comelec said failure of these candidates to comply is ground for disqualification!
Ok, let’s hear it from our Provincial Elections Supervisor Reddy Balarbar (and Dagupan City Elections supervisor Remarque Ravanzo).
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THE DANGEROUS FAMILY AFFAIR. The 14th Congress must perforce finally define the statute for the anti-political dynasty law.
Unless this is finally addressed, soon every town and city in the country will be under the thumbs of well-entrenched political families, warlords and gambling lords. To have fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mistresses, etc. switching positions among them as mayor and vice mayor, etc. or succeeding each other to circumvent the 3-year tenure rule is clearly a mockery of the law.
While I don’t begrudge members of respectable families who are steep in the spirit of public service for seeking to succeed each other today, the odds are great that soon the same family members will become arrogant and contemptuous soon as they realize that they can arrogate unto themselves the sole power to decide matters of life and death of their constituents, and get away with it.
So unless we confront this issue today, a slavish type of fiefdom across the country backed by private armies will rear its ugly head.
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GOING DOWN WITH HIM. It looks like I again sorely misjudged my favorite city mayor Benjie Lim.
Just when I thought he finally decided not to risk facing a complaint before the Ombudsman by directing the stoppage of construction of the controversial tourism building inside the Magsaysay Park (as PUNCH reported last week), I’ve been told that Metrostate has resumed the construction inside the Magsaysay Park!
What else can I say? From this, I can only surmise now that he actually wants the complaint to be filed against him, members of the bidding committee, the officials of the Metrostate Realty Corp. and the city councilors, his erstwhile allies because he evidently wants everyone to go down with him in this project and in the middle of his campaign to succeed his new nemesis, Speaker Joe de V!
So, he should not be disappointed. Let the case be filed.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/)
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