‘What the aspirants are doing cannot be disguised as anything else but premature campaigning, and yet the Comelec seems to be the last one to make that realization.’
THE public should take it as a huge affront – the billboards displaying the political candidates and their radio and TV plugs, an open, blatant display of dishonesty and wrongdoing as well as a bare-faced breach of ethics and our cultural values.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) says there is no law against what is quite obviously a form of political campaigning before the start of the official campaign period. But the aspirants are deliberately going around the law.
It is almost predictable how these candidates will perform if elected to the offices they are aspiring for. How do we expect professional ethics, integrity and uprightness from them as elected officials if they openly violate the rules?
If the Comelec wants to uphold the letter or essence of the law, it can certainly find ways to prevent this widespread form of premature campaigning.
What the aspirants are doing cannot be disguised as anything else but premature campaigning, and yet the Comelec seems to be the last one to make that realization.
In the weekly media forum Agenda last Friday at the Club Filipino, Comelec chief George Garcia emphasized anew that the poll body can do nothing since there is no election law being violated.
There is, of course, no legal jurisprudence to make the “culprits” legally accountable because the so-called election wrongdoing is not yet regarded as such before the start of the campaign period
One recourse would be for the Comelec to enter into a formal agreement with city and municipal mayors to prohibit such billboards in their areas before the campaign period. Unfortunately, this is better said than done since innumerable local officials and local candidates have similarly taken advantage of this glaring legal loophole.
During the same forum, Garcia again pointed out that poll automation has made it virtually impossible for electoral fraud, citing the integrity of the voting machines. This was in response to a question on the case of the so-called Garci boys who were allegedly involved in the massive electoral fraud in the 2004 national elections.
Garcia also virtually debunked several petitions from various civil society groups before the Supreme Court that have remained unresolved on such extremely-disturbing issues that the voting machines can be programmed, and that the ballots can be discarded and replaced by prepared ballots.
Shouldn’t the Supreme Court bound itself to a deadline on any electoral issue affecting the operations of the Comelec, especially on the printing of ballots? Some six million ballots costing P130M to P150M have suddenly been scuttled and wasted due to the SC ruling giving way to a Comelec-declared nuisance candidate in the senatorial race.
Many people are asking who should reimburse the Comelec for such a huge and otherwise unnecessary expense of taxpayers’ money. In criminal and civil cases, those on the losing end are ordered by the court to pay for damages.
We’ve heard somebody saying that in the matter of public interest, the High Court should be obliged to recognize the full consequences of its “belated” decision favoring a nuisance candidate and must share in the expense or “damages” affecting the poll body.
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Our government should acknowledge that President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US membership from the World Health Organization (WHO) is a recognition of the credibility and selfless efforts of our country’s very competent medical professionals who have opposed the widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines.
One of the leaders of this group, Dr. Alan Landrito, has documented and compiled cases of some 300,000 unexplained and mysterious deaths in the Philippines caused by the “experimental” COVID-19 vaccines. He and other alternative medical practitioners deeply lament that these deaths continue to mount and that the national government, which continues to favor the WHO, has been unremorsefully indifferent.
Trump has waged a campaign against the corrupt and demonic empire of global pharmaceuticals, multinational medical centers, medical suppliers and a worldwide syndicate of medical professionals that have been closely associated with the WHO.
