The Comelec, a reality check:
Field reports by 9 PCIJ fellows

The pre-eminent force or agency in the land, in this season of elections, is none other than the Commission on Elections or Comelec.

Unlike election bodies in other jurisdictions, however, the Philippines’ Comelec carries the double burden of administering elections and adjudicating election-related cases that often ensue in big numbers before and after the vote. Now led by five commissioners — with two still to be appointed by President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III — the Comelec has also recently launched new and firmer rules on campaigning and campaign finance matters.

Our latest offering is a composite report of nine PCIJ Training Fellows, and PCIJ Training Director Che de los Reyes, on the state of the Comelec field offices — personnel, budget, resources, and administrative concerns — in light of the multiple tasks they have to perform for the May 2013 elections.

On the ground, indeed, the state of affairs of the Comelec is less than peachy. Many of the commission’s field offices, for one, appear to be lacking in basic resources that are required to carry out the poll body’s mandate.

These field offices, which will be primarily responsible for enforcing the new resolutions on campaigning and campaign finance, are suffering from a serious dearth of personnel and funds. For another, Comelec field officers seem to be working in less than ideal conditions, hindering them from fully performing their duty as the country’s premier guardians of the ballot.

This is the dreary landscape revealed by a cursory survey of 39 Comelec provincial, city, and municipal field offices in Luzon and the Visayas. The survey – done from December 2012 to March 2013 – was complemented with discussions between PCIJ and the election supervisors and officers in key Comelec field offices in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao from August 2012 to January 2013.

The PCIJ had recently conducted four three-day seminar-workshops (“Covering Automated Elections and Uncovering Campaign Finance”) for print and broadcast journalists and netizens of Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and Metro Manila. In these seminars, the PCIJ also engaged representatives from the Comelec field offices as resource persons and observers.

Here is the link to our story and its accompanying sidebar.