News
[OPINION] Are all government employees not allowed to campaign?
The prohibitions are not absolute.... The consistent trend of the Supreme Court is to uphold free speech and expression over any form of election regulation. Facebook users have recently been sharing a post from 2016 with a very catchy title: “Government employees...
[OPINION] Is it possible Duterte’s candidacy was void from the beginning?
Here's why candidates should pay attention to every detail in the certificate of candidacy Many were stunned when President Rodrigo Duterte recently issued a proclamation seeking to void the amnesty of that Senator Antonio Trillanes IV received in 2011 from...
[OPINION] Con-Com draft constitution sets Comelec in the right direction
Under current laws, the Commission on Elections is both an administrator and a quasi-court. Its split personality presents a lot of complications. The Commission on Electons (Comelec) is a strange constitutional creature. Unlike in most jurisdictions where the sole...
[OPINION] 2019 elections the real battle for the opposition
It is in the voting precincts, not on Twitter or Facebook, where voters shake things up. Will the 2019 elections be game changing or make us slide faster to the kangkungan? I happened to be in London in 2016, when its present mayor, Sadiq Khan, was elected. I had just...
[OPINION] The problem with PNP’s drug test ‘dare’ for barangay candidates
By putting undue pressure on candidates to do something that might affect their candidacy, Director General Oscar Albayalde is intervening in the elections. Shortly after the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Department of the Interior and Local...
[OPINION] PDEA’s release of barangay drug list unconstitutional
It is also considered electioneering and a partisan political activity because it is ‘an act designed to promote the…defeat of a particular candidate or candidates to a public office’ On April 30, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency released a list of barangay...
[OPINION] Practical questions on the Sangguniang Kabataan law’s anti-dynasty provision
The law is not perfect and has exploitable loopholes, but having it in the first place, even in its diluted form, is already next to miraculous. On Saturday, April 14, the filing of certificates of candidacy (COC) for the May 2018 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan...
[OPINION] ‘Missing’ audit logs, wet ballots, and other Marcos lies
This is not just about the vice presidency. Every lie, fact-twisting, and misinformation systematically and relentlessly sowed by the Marcos camp is corrosive to the people’s faith in our electoral process.On April 2, 2018, the manual recount of the vice presidential...
[OPINION] Debunking Sotto’s election fraud claims
Electoral fraud is about increasing or decreasing the votes received by a candidate such that a losing candidate is made to appear the winner. Senator Sotto has failed to show proofs such happened. On March 6, Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto III gave a privilege speech,...
[OPINION] Much has to be done to have more elected women
A Comelec study reveals that while election players agree that females are competent and qualified, there is less acceptance of the idea of them actually running for a public office On November 2, 2017, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Gender Gap...