DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 13 Mar) - The Suara party list group on Tuesday assailed election guidelines it said have marginalized party lists and other candidates for the mid-year elections in the Philippines.
It said the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has designated areas where all candidates can put up their campaign posters, but many of those places are hardly noticeable.
It said unlike government candidates who can afford to pay television and radio ads, many party list groups and their candidates who cannot afford the expensive advertisements are forced to putting up their campaign streamers and banners at areas designated by the COMELEC.
And many of the party lists campaign materials were often destroyed or removed by unidentified groups across the country.
Abubakar Abalos Uy, Suara secretary general for Southern Mindanao, said: “The common poster areas of the COMELEC are rendering progressive groups defenseless against attacks which are becoming more intense as the elections draw near.”
“It is becoming more apparent that the guidelines of the COMELEC were only crafted to put administration bets to the advantage.”
In Tagum City, Uy said, campaign posters of his own Suara and other party list groups such as Gabriela, Anakpawis, Bayan Muna and Kabataan had been destroyed by the military.
“The posters were placed in common posters area. What was suspicious, however, was that while the progressive groups’ posters were destroyed, campaign materials of other groups and senatorial bets were left untouched.”
“Marginalization of party list groups like Suara is deliberate. We have been receiving information from our Davao del Norte chapters that the military have been giving instructions to village officials to destroy our posters. And it happened now and we believe that incidents like these will not stop right away. We are expecting even for the worse,” Uy said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner. (With a report from Romy Bwaga)
No comments:
Post a Comment