A Commission on Elections (Comelec) directive that prohibits government employees from campaigning for their favored candidates online is regrettably about as enforceable as the law against premature campaigning.
The resolution issued was initially perceived as banning both government officials and employees from making comments or plugging for their favored candidates either on Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks.
When Palace spokesperson Abigail Valte voiced her dissent on the resolution, the Comelec did a turnabout and clarified that the prohibition applies only to the government employees, not on elected and appointed officials.
Which is funny when one thinks about it. In this age where being online means crossing nearly every boundary known to humanity, one can afford to hide their anonymity behind aliases or fake accounts.
The case of the Mamasapano massacre video is a case in point. When the video was uploaded more than a year ago, there was public outrage but the people responsible for uploading it have yet to be found and penalized.
Just as people can virtually access most content on the Web, so can they set up their own accounts. The Comelec is fooling itself when it issued the resolution to prohibit government employees from campaigning for their favored candidates online.
If anything, it imposes on their right to speak out online. The Comelec forged a partnership with Facebook Philippines so they can, among other things, monitor candidates’ campaign spending habits online.
But it faces a gargantuan task trying to monitor more than one million Facebook users who are government employees to check whether they are campaigning for their bosses.
The Comelec already had their hands full trying to fix the glitches in the vote-counting machines (VCM) that they will deploy throughout the country in time for the elections—not to mention the training of the board of election inspectors (BEI) and the teachers that will oversee the whole election process.
Heck, they can’t even prosecute those candidates who post all sorts of campaign material on trees and other prohibited places in the country without a complaint from the public.
If creating fictional online accounts can be done, what can stop government employees and other people, for that matter, from doing just that and taking their own sweet time promoting their favored candidates—usually their bosses—or mudslinging the opponents of their bosses?
Practically almost nothing. Almost nothing since you never know when they can get lucky and stumble on an actual case that they can prosecute. Until then, don’t hold your breath.
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