Security during the campaign

I do not see why the Comelec should be in a quandary over whom to provide security during the campaign -- suspended governor Gwen Garcia or acting governor Agnes Magpale -- unless its thinking has become too obfuscated with politicking it has lost all capacity to actually think.

Magpale may have assumed the functions and duties of the governor owing to the suspension of Garcia, but she is still just the vice governor. Garcia, on the other hand, has only been suspended. She has not been stripped of her mandate.

The way I understand the matter of security detail, it is to be provided to the person holding the office, not to the duties and functions that person is performing. What Garcia has been suspended from is merely the performance of such duties and functions.

But Garcia's hold on her office has not been taken away from her because she has not been stripped of such office. Her mandate continues to be in effect. Again, what has been suspended is only the performance of her duties and functions. There is no ambiguity in that.

It is therefore very clear that Garcia continues to be the governor even as she serves out her suspension. Of all institutions, this matter ought to be clearest to the Comelec, unless of course it wants to lap it up with the powers that be.

Since Garcia is still the governor despite the suspension of her functions and duties, it is therefore she whom the Comelec is obligated to provide a security detail. Now, as to whether the Comelec wishes to provide Magpale her own detail, that is a different issue altogether.

But come to think of it, why should the Comelec split hairs over whom to provide security details? As the overseer of elections in an overly politicized country, it is the responsibility of the Comelec to secure everybody.

If only there are enough warm bodies to through into the picture, the Comelec can even assign security to each and every candidate if it wants. But of course the reality does not support such a situation.

Still I think it is within the discretionary powers of the Comelec to provide security to whoever it feels needs to be secured, depending on the circumstances. And clearly, anybody can see that Garcia needs security regardless of which side of the political fence she sits.

If the Comelec can declare large swaths of territory such as entire regions to be political hotspots that need special attention on matters of security, how can it miss the security requirements of one single person?

Again, the only way Comelec cannot see this point is if it chooses to play politics and try to be in the good graces of you-know-who. And let not the Comelec deny this as the swiftness with which it granted a gun ban exemption to the same you-know-who still rings in my ears.

What I understand about security detail is protection of human life, not preservation of political color. Life needs to be protected regardless of what station that life occupies. If even prison inmates have protection, how much more a duly-elected governor, even if suspended.

Frankly I do not see why this has to be such a big issue when matters of security ought to come naturally for institutions of authority such as the Comelec. If the Comelec truly cared only about security and not about political repercussions, this would have been a non-issue.

But since Comelec, for all its pretensions of neutrality and independence, only cared about whether its action would offend one political side or the other, it had to find itself in a bind where there ought to be none. Susmaryosep. If it wants, why not secure both Gwen and Agnes.