Daring Comelec in its face

A leisure drive along the Perez Boulevard in Dagupan City draws one’s attention to the roadside posters of senatorial candidates endorsed by the Hugpong ng Pagbabago regional political party. Clearly, the featured candidates had no hand in the production and display of the illegal sized posters outside designated areas in the city.

Curiously, we note that all the posters carry the LIFE logo of the Lim-Fernandez mayoralty tandem in Dagupan City, giving the impression that either LIFE produced the illegal posters displayed outside designated areas, or LIFE endorses the candidates and/or vice versa.   

Whatever is the objective of LIFE, it is clearly flouting the law, and daring Comelec in its face to remove these with an implicit threat of dire consequences?

The country is only in its first week of campaign period for national posts and we are seeing the blatant violations of election laws in the streets with no seeming concern from  Comelec about the violations.

For Comelec to merely invoke lack of personnel for failing to enforce the law is a cop-out, a convenient excuse to favor certain political parties and candidates. Such a claim is, in fact, a lie because it can direct police to enforce the election laws. Ditto for the provincial Comelec.

If Comelec cannot enforce simple basic rules, how can it be relied upon to being about an honest, orderly and peaceful elections?  It’s time to make local Comelec officials and violators of election law accountable.

Useless Comelec rules

EVERY election, candidates are governed by Comelec rules. Failure to comply could lead to disqualification.  But haven’t you noticed?  We have yet to see a candidate getting ousted for a Comelec rule infraction. The most violated rule is the size of a candidate’s poster/tarpaulin.

Next, many, if not practically all, candidates hang-nail-paste their posters outside of Comelec-designated areas.  The specific budget allotted a candidate to spend for every voter is openly exceeded; only hypocrites will deny this.   

Why don’t we remove, finally, these useless rules, and next prod Congress to make a more relevant Comelec by empowering it to make meaningful measures to hold a seamless, nearly-flawless voting procedure on election day?  After all, election is electing, not ejecting a candidate’s basic freedom of choice—like spending as much as he can.  It’s his money, anyway. 

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