EDITORIAL - Confused or marching to a beat?

The Comelec recently came up with a series of measures it sums up as an attempt to curb election spending in order to level the playing field for all candidates. That is, of course, an odd position for the Comelec to take, given the history of its past actions.

How could a Comelec that once shot down the aspirations of otherwise constitutionally qualified Filipinos to run for public office for no other reason than that they could not mount a credible campaign (poor) now crimp the poll spending ability of those it did qualify (rich)?

Let us simplify the madness: Tal Polano, qualified by the Constitution to run for public office for being a Filipino citizen with no criminal record, of legal age and able to read and write, was disqualified by Comelec for being poor and unable to mount a credible campaign.

Instead, the Comelec qualified Lat Onalop, who aside from having the same constitutional qualifications as Tal Polano, had something the latter never had — doodley squat — the obscene amount of money needed to mount a credible campaign for a position that pays peanuts.

And yet (and here is when the madness really kicks in) after qualifying and accepting Lat Onalop as a candidate on the sheer weight of his doodley squat, the Comelec now wants him to put the brakes on his spending. Hello?!?

The Comelec says it only wants a level playing field. Hello?!? again. Wasn’t the playing field already leveled right at the start when only those with doodley squat were qualified, while those with no campaign resources were unceremoniously stripped of their dignities for being poor?

What a strange proposition it is to allow entry to those who have money to spend and yet once in are prevented from spending the very money that allowed them to gain entry in the first place.

Since it is difficult to believe such learned men as the ones comprising the Comelec can be so contradictory and confused, maybe the only way to sort out the madness is to assume their actions conform to some marching order which the public has yet to divine.

Where the marching order comes from is anybody’s guess, of course. But only a fool cannot see that even in a level playing field — in fact especially in a level playing field — there is always one side that eventually ends up getting the advantage.