The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) clarified to the Filipino public that they can’t stop early election campaigns staged by various politicians both running for local and national elections due to a Supreme Court Ruling.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista, noted that premature campaigning is no longer in the stature book because of the Supreme Court’s decision on Comelec vs. Penera case. The ruling was released by the Supreme Court of the Philippines in November 2009.
Comelec chairman Andres Bautista clarified that the SC ruling had superceded the election laws, which used to consider electioneering outside of the campaign period as an election offense.
The poll body also noted that they are planning to come up with guidelines for activities that are allowed and not allowed in the wake of the Penera ruling.
The SC ruling upheld the provisions in Republic Act 9369 – the Poll Automation Law – that “any person who files his certificate of candidacy (COC) shall only be considered as a candidate at the start of the campaign period” and that “unlawful acts applicable to a candidate shall be in effect only upon start of the campaign period.”
During the past elections, the COMELEC had different campaign periods, under manual elections, the campaign period starts on the day after the last day of filing of the Certificate of Candidacy (COC).
Since the automation started in 2010, the filing of COC was pushed forward to allow the Comelec to pre-print the names of the candidates, positions and polling precincts on the ballots.
For the May 9, 2016 elections, the campaign period for president, vice president, senators and party-list groups runs from Feb. 9 to May 7, while for local positions it will be from March 5 to May 7.
