Last week candidates for public office made their individual pilgrimages to file their certificates of candidacy before the Commission on Elections. The similarities between the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca or a Christian’s devotional tour of the Holy Land are evident.
It is a mandatory journey for all politicians. It should begin with an appropriate amount of soul-searching and even atonement and absolution for past transgressions. Family members and friends are usually present to help the traveler as her or she starts the long and arduous voyage.
Once begun, there is rarely an opportunity to turn back so a firm and lasting commitment is necessary. Other priorities and schedules must be changed to make sure the destination can be reached. Lives are put on hold.
The problem is that every three years, the nation is put on hold from October until May of the following year.
The Omnibus Election Code of the Philippine states that the campaign period for national candidates starts 90 days before election day and we all know that is a myth. The 2019 campaign period started this past week. Make no mistake about that. Some candidates have resigned their government positions. Candidates are “unofficially” campaigning through interviews and television and radio. Already, people are being told why they absolutely should not vote for the “other guy” running for mayor, representative or senator.
We are often reminded that politics is so very dominate in the Philippines and why that is not necessarily a positive. But how can we ever get away from it?
In the United Kingdom the combined length of the election campaign and the time for the new parliament to assemble is typically around four weeks. In France—which has two rounds of voting for national office—the official campaign period when posters are put up and sorties happen is two weeks. Election campaigns in German last only six weeks.
Certainly these are the official campaign periods and politicians everywhere break or bend the rules. But there is strict peer pressure that a Cabinet official is not going to suddenly appear in “neutral” television commercial talking about all the wonderful things a particular department or agency has been doing in the past year.
The reason we ask if we have to do it the American way is that the unofficial campaign season in the United States never ends.
The movement a US president assumes office, they are already running for a second term which election will occur in four years. Every two years, Americans elect their entire House of Representatives and one-third of their Senate. Roughly two years or 50 percent of every four year presidential term are taken up with campaigning.
But the people and the system is used to it in the sense business goes on fairly much as usual.
Here in the Philippines though, there are constantly critical policy issues requiring difficult decisions and necessary legislation that is not going to please all the voters. It is almost guaranteed that legislation in both the House and the Senate is going to be delayed with lengthy “hearings in aid of legislation” until next year’s election. Can the nation afford that?
Is there a reasonable justification for the candidate filings in October rather than a few weeks before the official campaign period begins? To give the Commission of Elections extra time to deal with protests and legal maneuvers for “nuisance” candidates does not seem fair to the people or the country.