EDITORIAL - Emasculated

The judiciary has emasculated the Commission on Elections in several areas, including reining in party-list groups, limiting campaign spending and, most recently, preventing premature campaigning. The Comelec is being rendered inutile, with the judiciary having the final say on major election issues.

Today, thanks to the courts, anything goes during election season. The party-list system has become a farce, abused by major political parties and groups that are anything but marginalized, with the annual multimillion-peso expenses of an ever-growing number of party-list congressman an additional burden on taxpayers.

One election rule that has not yet been scrapped by the courts is the one limiting the display of campaign materials to common poster areas. Candidates must be disabused of the notion that they can display their images and names wherever they please.

As the public reaction to credit-grabbing epal politicians indicates, people don’t like seeing those names and faces on billboards marking government projects. People like it even less when politicians treat lampposts, walls and trees in public places as their personal property by displaying crudely disguised campaign posters.

In several areas, posters and streamers have been attached even to power lines, risking damage to the wires and disruption of electricity supply. Some of the posters try to mask the political nature by containing messages of congratulations on every imaginable occasion including graduation season. Some announce ongoing public service programs. Others are unabashedly political, such as the streamers that have popped up all over Metro Manila, promoting the tandem in 2016 of Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano.

It’s worse than epal. There ought to be a law, or a Comelec rule, but the poll body no longer has jurisdiction over candidates’ self-promotion before the official start of the campaign period. There are, however, rules against pollution and littering in public places, and there must be rules governing the display of any information material for public consumption.

Businessmen pay for billboard space and the display of ad materials is regulated. Why is the government helpless when it comes to political campaign materials? The streamers and billboards are making Metro Manila even more unsightly than it already is and, as in the case of streamers attached to power lines, endangering the public. There ought to be a law – against government failure to do its job.