EDITORIAL - Clean up your own mess

As of noon yesterday, two truckloads of garbage from the campaign had been collected around Metro Manila by personnel of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, and the job was just starting. In the general elections in 2010, the MMDA collected 15 truckloads of trash, consisting mainly of streamers, posters, sample ballots, leaflets and even tarpaulins, with piles of food containers thrown in.

It was a common scene across the country, and not just in urban centers. Politicians largely ignored all rules of the Commission on Elections on the display of campaign materials, and violations intensified in the final days of the campaign. By the time election day rolled around, it looked like fiesta time in many areas especially around polling centers, with posters strung across streets and between lampposts, attached to trees and power cables, and plastered on every wall.

Posters pasted on walls and lampposts, in violation of rules on the display of campaign materials, are the hardest to strip away. A thorough cleanup is costly and should be charged to the politicians, parties or groups that displayed the posters. Or else they should deploy their own teams to tear down their campaign materials. If they have the vehicles and personnel to display the materials, surely they have the same resources to clean up their own mess.

Despite the threat to go after violators of rules on the display of campaign materials, and a touted utilization of social media to go after violators, the Comelec appeared helpless in enforcing its own rules. After election day, it is focused on finishing the tallying of votes. Once the vote count is over, it will deal with election protests.

No candidate has ever been called to account for the illegal display of campaign materials, or made to clean up his own garbage. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is always a first time for the Comelec to start showing that its rules aren’t there merely for decoration. Rules are made, not to be routinely broken but to be strictly enforced.