It’s heartening to see the enthusiasm of people not involved with the campaign of any of the candidates in the forthcoming polls in making sure that the May 2010 elections be honest, peaceful, and credible.
Since it was launched last March 8, VOTE 2010, an election monitoring project of VERA Files with 17 civil society organizations, eight community newspapers, three media-related institutions and a number of individuals, has been steadily getting reports from citizen-journalists, which are not reported in mainstream media.
Immediately after the first part of our two-weekend seminar-workshop on citizen journalism at the Holy Angel University in Angeles city, one of the participants, Joel Ocampo , who is active in the Social Action Center of the Holy Rosary Parish, took pictures of posters of candidates nailed on trees which is a illegal.
Section 22 of Comelec Resolution 8758, which implements the Fair Election Act (Republic Act 9006) provides that political posters can only be displayed in Comelec-designated areas. It also clearly states that “A common poster area does not refer to a post, a tree, the wall of a building or an existing public structure that is in active use, but a structure that is temporarily set up by the candidates or political parties for the exclusive purpose of displaying their campaign posters.”