Election legal guidelines within the nation must be amended to set a restrict on how a lot donors might give to candidates’ campaigns to forestall elected officers from being indebted to a privileged few, a pro-democracy group mentioned.
Participate PH, a consortium of election watchdogs and members of the academe, made the advice in a 27-page report on proposed political and electoral reforms.
“[Elections laws should] provide a donation limit per donor or contributor to democratize the opportunity to support candidates. This will minimize the capture of candidates by some moneyed interest,” Participate PH mentioned.
“Such regulation would lessen the influence of individuals or groups from entrenched interests to leverage their contributions for access to public policies. This should also encourage political parties and candidates to partner with more donors, resulting in greater public accountability and institutional capacity strengthening,” it added.
Participate PH mentioned setting limits on how a lot a person or a gaggle can donate can even handle Section 102J of the Omnibus Election Code, which it says offers authorized cowl on candidates’ spending because it gives that bills for partaking authorized counsel is not going to be included in figuring out whether or not a candidate or a celebration has complied with expenditure limits.
“This provision is susceptible to becoming a loophole in the law on expenditure limits. Vote protection can be very well classified among those for which legal counsel may be employed,” Participate PH mentioned.
“This could be an avenue for coursing many of the otherwise non-legal expenses of candidates. Putting a more reasonable cap on costs would be a better policy than exempting expenses for the employment of counsel in determining compliance with expenditure limits,” it added.
Premature campaigning
Participate PH additionally referred to as for the repeal of the definition of a candidate offered by Republic Act 9369 or the Automated Elections Law, which fits by the Supreme Court ruling on Peñera vs. Comelec (2009) offering that a person will not be thought-about a candidate till the marketing campaign interval begins.
This implies that whereas candidates for the nationwide and native elections file their certificates of candidacy (COC) in October a yr earlier than election yr, their bills forward of the marketing campaign interval will not be counted as marketing campaign bills since they don’t seem to be thought-about a candidate throughout that interval.
“The definition of candidate in the law must cover not only those who have already filed their certificates of candidacy but also those who aspire for or seek an elective office and who have publicly announced the same, or who have, through analogous acts, openly manifested their desire to seek an elective, and those who would eventually file their COC,” Participate PH mentioned.
Participate PH mentioned that the legislation ought to undertake Section 79 of the Omnibus Election Code, which defines a candidate as “any person aspiring for or seeking an elective public office, who has filed a certificate of candidacy by himself or through an accredited political party, aggroupment, or coalition of parties.” — BM, GMA Integrated News
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
