EDITORIAL – Early birds

Common sense easily tells when a politician engages in an early campaign. The Supreme Court, however, has ruled that there is no such thing as premature campaigning. So now several public officials widely known to be eyeing elective posts in 2016 are feverishly engaged in self-promotion, often using the tax-funded resources of their offices.

The daang matuwid government should be setting the example in campaign discipline and judicious use of people’s money. Instead among the most brazen early campaigners – as critics have pointed out – are certain administration officials.

Probably worried that the situation could get out of hand, the Commission on Elections has found it necessary to appeal to prospective candidates to temper their self-promotion. Comelec officials see the politicians’ infomercials as a way of circumventing the commission’s caps on election spending.

Recent infomercials have become brazen, Comelec officials said as they aired their appeal to prospective candidates. Critics liken the unabashed self-promotion to the propensity of epal politicians to plaster their names and images on billboards, claiming personal credit for tax-funded government projects. Public condemnation has failed to eradicate this, and proposals to ban credit-grabbing practices have died a natural death in Congress, home of many epal politicians.

Court rulings have stymied numerous Comelec efforts to regulate campaign finance and give candidates with limited resources a fighting chance against rivals with vast war chests. Comelec efforts to rationalize the party-list system have also been derailed by the courts. The latest setback to election reforms is the ruling on premature campaigning.

With the Supreme Court ruling, politicians are scrambling to use all the resources at their disposal to get a head start. Where to draw the line between private and public resources for campaigning is the problem. The SC may have ruled that there is no such thing as premature campaigning, but there are laws prohibiting the use of people’s money and public property for private purposes. Auditors and anti-government watchdogs must be vigilant, even as voters remember the brazen self-promoters.