EDITORIAL - Ensure enforcement

As part of continuing efforts to stop epal or self-promoting credit-grabbing by politicians at taxpayers’ expense, the Department of the Interior and Local Government has ordered its offices nationwide and local government units to remove the names, images and likenesses of public officials from all state-funded projects.

DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla, in a memorandum circular, ordered the “immediate removal and correction” of such materials, with heads of offices to be held accountable for “full and prompt compliance.”

The circular covers all provincial, city, municipal and barangay officials. It prohibits the display of any government official’s name, photo, logo, initials, color motif, slogan or any identifying symbol on signages, markers, tarpaulins and similar materials displayed in state-funded projects.

Remulla should include a prohibition on the display of greetings by politicians in public spaces, unless in registered advertising spots. For such self-promotion, the politicians must be charged the regular advertising rates paid by those outside government. And the politicians must pay from their own pockets.

Public spaces nationwide are littered with streamers and billboards of politicians, greeting the public for every imaginable occasion including fiestas and graduations. Politicians’ billboards and streamers bearing Christmas greetings have not yet been taken down, even in Metro Manila. And many such materials are displayed in spots that are prohibited during election campaigns: strung from utility wires, plastered on the walls of public buildings or attached to electric posts and trees.

Are taxpayers paying for those political self-promotions? Billboards and streamers aren’t cheap, and such epal materials are unnecessary public expenses. They also pollute and ruin public spaces.

Aside from the DILG circular, Remulla stressed that the prohibition on politicians’ self-promoting materials is in the 2026 General Appropriations Act.

He encouraged the public to report violations of the prohibition. The DILG must inform the public about the mechanisms for reporting, if possible anonymously.

Once the mechanism is in place, the DILG must show that it can act swiftly on reported violations. It must also impose various forms of sanctions on those who defy the order. Without these, Remulla’s initiative will die a natural death and be remembered as nothing but rhetoric.

At this point, his order is a most welcome move. Now the DILG must make sure it is fully enforced.