Comelec’s loose ends

This year’s elections may be over, but there are still loose ends to tie up such as the ongoing dispute between Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Andres Bautista and his fellow commissioners that has boiled over to the public in recent days.

It came to a head when the Comelec narrowly voted to allow losing Liberal Party (LP) bet Mar Roxas to file his statement of expenditures one week after the month-long deadline for the Statement of Campaign Expenses (SOCE) had elapsed.

Amid accusations that he purposely delayed his submission of his SOCE to get back at the local officials whom he felt had betrayed him and supported eventual winner President Rodrigo Duterte, Roxas responded by bringing truckloads of documents that supposedly detailed every expense that he made in his losing campaign.

Included in his expense report was the P110 million his mother spent to fund his campaign. Roxas can make the argument that his expense report is more detailed than the others, but the fact that he can afford to spend more than P110 million for his campaign suggests that he can also afford the services of accountants that can submit his expense report on or ahead of the Comelec deadline.

There were other issues raised against Bautista by his fellow commissioners, but the late LP SOCE report was the fuse that lit the feud between them despite the Comelec chief’s insistence that there was no row, only a misunderstanding between them.

That’s for them to fix among themselves, but the SOCE delay by Roxas remains a valid issue that should be addressed and not set aside as a mere exception to the rule that was set up by Congress in the first place.

Roxas not only placed at risk his chances of running for public office anew but also his running mate’s, Vice President Leni Robredo, and officials allied with him in other parts of the country like Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III and the LP slate in the province.

The rationale behind the vote to allow Roxas an extension may be sound — that barring the winning LP officials from assuming their post will set a precedent that will deprive voters of their choice of candidates serving them — but it will give others an excuse to delay their submission of SOCE in future elections.

And we’re not even talking about the upcoming barangay elections which Bautista wants to delay. Whatever decision Congress comes up with on the barangay elections, the Comelec has little choice but to adjust to it.

That said, it won’t be unrealistic for voters to expect that the Comelec should reevaluate not only what they did wrong in this year’s elections but also to improve on it further, including strictly enforcing the month-long deadline for the submission of campaign expenses reports.