The spate of election paraphernalia and vast chests of radio and tv ads make methink that politics is just for the moneyed class in our country. In the morning, I listen to the radio and I often hear the name of four or a few more candidates of one political group talking about their qualifications and their future plans once they reach the Senate floor. Then when I roam the streets of Metromanila, I see various posters of candidates hanging on electric posts, pasted on fences, etcetera. One tarpaulin would cost minimum of 100 pesos; and I see more than a dozen already of one candidate in our barangay already. So multiply 100 by 12 and that would be 1,200. Add to that the flyers -- mind you colored, the tee-shirts of their supporters, the gasoline needed to run the jeepney that goes around with a loudspeaker announcing the name of the candidate. You would come up with about, conservatively, P5,000 per day of campaigning.
Who can afford that nowadays?
I think that the Comelec should already assess the political tracks of the candidates and abstract from these how best to stop such candidates who violate election rules and regulations, as well as come up with a democratic way by which all candidates could be made to toe the line of having equal exposure as everybody else as candidates.
I can think of this: all candidates before launching their campaigns must be willing to have a uniform kitty: where not one but always, all the candidates will be featured. No candidate should be made to tower over the rest when media covers them or exposes them -- radio, tv, print. In other words, those media that can expose candidates to millions of viewers should be reserved for equal exposure of all.
Now those other gadgets like celphones, telephones, and technology formats like emails, facebook accounts, should be a free-for-all use. In other words, candidates may expose themselves a million times in those as much as they want.
Also, there should be a Comelec hour, whereby the Comelec shall showcase the candidates, one by one on radio, tv, and print. Say a newspaper wants to feature a certain candidate, it should also feature the photos of the other candidates at the end of the same article with brief captions so that the readers shall have a broad glimpse of who are vying for the post. At communities, the Comelec should have one bulletin board for all candidates to use.
In this way, we are truly democratizing election campaigning and not allowingany individual or group to dominate the political scene.
By the way, I would like to invite the Comelec to visit Barangay Dona Imelda to see who are abiding by or violating Comelec rules and regulations in campaigning.
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