Non-candidates

We have some of the most bizarre election practices in the world.

- ALEX MAGNO

The strangest has to be the one that converts candidates into non-candidates after they had filed their certificates and were duly accredited.

At all hours these days, we are ceaselessly assaulted by political advertising from people with money to burn. On the streets, we run into their giant billboards. They bombard us when we turn on our television sets or radio. They infiltrate our timelines when we access social media.

We get no respite from those who can afford to abuse us through repetitive encounters with their names and faces.

The most proximate reason for this advertising hell we go through is jurisprudence that says that throughout the period between the filing of candidacies and the start of the official campaign period, the candidates are not candidates. Their spending during this interregnum cannot be regulated by the Comelec. They are free to assault the voters as much as they can afford to.

Our jurisprudence creates the most offensive legal fiction there is. The candidates have filed their certificates of candidacy. Their names are on the ballots currently being printed, tailored for every locality. But in the eyes of the law, they are non-candidates.

The situation is as insane as our national budget.

The interregnum between the period when candidacies are filed and the formal campaign period happens because we chose to use vote counting technology that uses ballots unique to every locality. Every municipality has its own ballot listing local candidates.