WITH the filing of Certificates of Candidacy (COCs) last October 11-17, the election fever is on all over the country.
Officially, the campaign period will begin only on February 12 for senatorial and party-list congressional candidates. For those running for district representatives and local government positions, it is March 30. But Philippine elections being what they are, no one who filed a certificate of candidacy can say he/she will just sit it out until the official dates set by the Commission on Elections. Every waking moment will now be spent pushing their candidacies without openly doing so, lest they be charged with premature campaigning.
We will thus see more people addressing forums, cutting more ribbons, greeting newlyweds, inaugurating basketball courts, and visiting community projects of all kinds. The motorcades, the street tarpaulins, the radio and television ads will come later when the official campaign periods begin – 89 days for those with national constituency and 43 days for those with district, provincial, or municipal ones.
These are the elections which some officials of the House of Representatives wanted to cancel – allegedly so it could concentrate on drafting a new Constitution as a Constituent Assembly. Fortunately, reason prevailed and so we are holding our midyear elections as scheduled on May 12, 2019.
Because the positions at stake are mostly local ones – governors and other provincial officials, mayors and other municipal officials – local issues, local problems, and local needs will dominate the coming campaign. But for the senatorial and, to some extent, congressional contests, national issues and the national government’s performance will be at the center of the election.
We are today in the midst of the problem of inflation – high prices. These have been steadily rising since January, the result of international factors, rising oil prices, along with local ones, new taxes that took effect in January. How the government acts on this problem will surely affect the results of the senatorial elections, in which so many prominent people are now running.
Everything that happens in our nation in the coming months will have some effect on the election in May, 2019. And the results of that election will affect our lives as individual citizens and our country as a whole. We thus look forward to this coming election which is at the heart of our political system and of our democracy.
