Election Lawyer Says Schools, Watchdogs Can Help In Monitoring Candidates’ Spending
ELECTION WATCHDOGS – Election Lawyer Emil Maranon says COMELEC could use some help from universities in auditing candidates’ campaign expenses.
COMELEC requires candidates to file their Statement of Contributions Expenditure or SOCE regardless of the election’s results.
Statement of Contribution Expenditure or SOCE is a comprehensive detail report about the campaign contributions and expenditures of political candidates.
Emil Marañon says COMELEC should get some help by working with accounting schools and leave the auditing to accounting students.
This is based on an article from Rappler.
In an episode of Rappler’s Newsbreak Chats about campaign expenses, Maranon said working with universities can help the Comelec recheck political candidates’ expenditure declarations.
He also said watchdogs during the election should have a talk with COMELEC on how they can help in auditing. In his statement:
“Election watching doesn’t stop after election day. They can probably talk with Comelec on how they can help in auditing all these SOCEs.”
COMELEC, he said, may encounter difficulty in reviewing all the SOCEs, as 80,000-100,000 were file after the election. He also said that COMELEC do not have enough workers to properly go through all the documents.
In his statement:
“Ang reality naman diyan…Comelec has a vey tiny department in charge diyan… hindi pa mga permanent positions diyan, they will just get lawyers from one department then they will hire contractuals and casuals…wala talagang way yung Comelec to counter check all of these SOCEs,”
or “The reality there is that COMELEC has a very tiny department in charge of that responsibility. Positions there aren’t even permanent. They’ll just get lawyers from on department and hire contractual and casual workers. The COMELEC doesn’t really have a way to counter check all of these SOCEs.”
He revealed the COMELEC’s inadequacy to facilitate in counter checking SOCEs.
That is all there is to it, we’ll post updates as soo as we got them.
