Celebrities and the Ironies of Election Law

The law can be puzzling sometimes.

This recent COMELEC’s snarling over the services of celebrities and other media personality as campaign endorsers had me suddenly thinking about the law and how I’ve learned that the law can sometimes be of brittle basis at all.

According to Section 6.6 of the Fair Elections Act of 2001 states:

“Any mass media columnist, commentator, announcer, reporter, on-air correspondent or personality who is a candidate for any elective public office or is a campaign volunteer for or employed or retained in any capacity by any candidate or political party shall be deemed resigned, if so required by their employer, or shall take a leave of absence from his/her work as such during the campaign period: Provided, That any media practitioner who is an official of a political party or a member of the campaign staff of a candidate or political party shall not use his/her time or space to favor any candidate or political party. “

Violation of the above-cited legal provision is considered as an election offense, one that would send the malefactor to prison for at least a year and as much as six years. Like a medium-termed criminal offense for that matter.

Clearly, the specific prohibition somehow runs smack right into the privilege for expression of celebrities as guaranteed by the most fundamental law of our land, aside from the freedom of abode and that of press.

Now of course, the involved celebrity is merely asked to resign or take a leave of absence, which is not a very difficult thing to do.

Yet – despite of that – I still see that this particular provision creates some irony in law that could be monumental at some length.

Election laws at present allows so many other things that should have been more pressing or of graver concern, such as candidates appearing in many forms of advertisement (in trimedia, billboards, giveaways etc.) way before the formal election campaign period commences.

Apparently, the Election Code does not become effective against these modes of self promotion for election candidates or would-be candidates which certainly becomes a circumvention of the law.

Media advertisements for one – which was not allowed before – per se allows so much imbalances and unfair situations against candidates whose funding are not as wide as the others, even though their abilities and intention are larger than the rest.

I am not against this new allowances in election activities entirely (high-funding media advertisements), since I am part of media one way or another and I can empathize with its benefits. But I feel it could be easily abused by big moneyed politicians riding on mere bandwagon and hype and that COMELEC should give it priority monitoring, than threatening celebrities endorsing their select candidates.

Now I am not so concern here about the matter of unregulated advertisement. It is just an issue now why the law can be puzzling sometimes.

Allowing some graver acts to proceed while disallowing other saner matters.