Running on unregulated crowdsourcing, anyone? (2)

With the qualifications for running for public office at any level set at the barest minimum, this opens the floodgates even to nincompoops joining the mad political scramble.

Worse, early political advertising appears to be the opium for this societal craze, this 21st-century career lottery, this 1:1 win-loss ratio. There’s nothing to lose with a 50-50 chance of winning a seat. Thus, every aspirant-cum-candidate is in a kind of feeding frenzy, or who attracts more followers attracts more votes.

Unless and until another legislated enactment supersedes a contemporary one that governs whether or not premature campaigning may have been committed and violated some well-grounded moral principles of fair play at any given historical period, the phenomenon might become rampant.

When such cases rise to unprecedented limits, only then will public administrators feel the need to propose a policy measure for another policy future. That appears to be where we are by the present-day scheme and scene.

Under prior laws and Comelec issuances, the original prohibition against such acts (i.e., election campaigning or partisan political activity) was both morally and legally established until it went through a “paradigm shift,” thereby providing a shield against what used to be labeled an unlawful offense.

It has removed the guardrails; it has moved the needle beyond the redline on the meter that defines danger. The supposed safety warning has been ignored. The shift has obliquely democratized every citizen’s right to run for public office in an enabling regime.

Simply imagine that the redline on your car’s tachometer was deleted or peeled off such that the needle could sweep beyond the redline on the round meter, thus failing to warn you that you’re beyond the maximum safe rotational speed of the engine, a situation sure to cause catastrophic damage.

Perhaps one can take a bird’s-eye view of the controlling case that legal scholars and policy advisers might consider a “legal loophole” in an election law. What’s quite astonishing is that there had been efforts to introduce new legislative measures that would address a nagging and dragging concern nesting in our collective psyche. Truly, as a public issue, premature campaigning could be debated till kingdom come.

An academic paper on the subject already established an empirical basis for the proposition that, at least at the level of attitude, premature campaigning is a win-win. Thus, the study titled “Prejudice in Political Advertisement Before the Legal Campaigning Period: Moral or Immoral?” by Kim de Roxas et al. concluded that, ultimately, the data suggested that “many Filipinos currently consider advanced political advertisements before the legal campaign period to be acceptable and moral acts.”

More correctly stated, therefore, the multi-authored article had this to propound: “Specifically, individuals with biases tended to perceive advanced political advertisements more favorably from a moral standpoint compared to those without bias, indicating that prejudice may shape one’s perception of the practice.”

In yet another online critique written by Atty. Ismael Sarangaya Jr. of divinalaw.com titled “Premature Campaigning as Poll Offense: Imperative or Illusory?,” the author was likewise led to this conclusion, viz., “The lawmakers must first come up with a consensus as to whether premature campaigning is a ‘substantive evil’. This could be a very interesting debate among constitutionalists, election law practitioners, law students, and the public.”

Without plunging into the legalese, it begs stating that in Penera vt Comelec, the case stemmed from the careful foresight that the “political activities of Penera before the start of the campaign period were within the realm of her freedom of expression.” However, by most ordinary logic alone, it presents a degree of ambiguity as to whether such a positional view, unless revisited, can hold water.

Clearly, it threw a monkey wrench. Absent any new law, premature campaigning nests in the limbo of meaningless utterances.