More candidates for the 2022 elections will be using online campaigns amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
However, the poll body said face-to-face campaigns would likely still used by many candidates to reach out to voters in isolated parts of the country.
In an online forum last Sunday, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said they expect online campaigns would be widely used to minimize risk of infection as well as boost their presence among the youth.
“Since most of the youth are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, definitely many will campaign in the said platforms,” Jimenez said when asked about possible campaign trends during the pandemic.
During the 2019 elections alone, he said, some 22 million or about a third of the 61 million registered voters belong to the youth sector.
Online monitoring
Currently, Jimenez said, Comelec is able to track social campaign expenditures of candidates by getting the ad information from social-media companies.
However, he admitted on the limitation of such scheme, which is not based on real time monitoring of transactions by candidates and does not cover “dark campaigns,” which include online “fake news” as well as “smear campaigns.”
Jimenez said the problem could be addressed if Congress will pass a new law so they could better regulate the online campaigns.
While there will be greater use of social-media campaigns in the polls next year, Jimenez said face-to-face campaign will still be utilized by candidates albeit in a limited scale.
“Face-to-face campaign will still be there. But there will some restrictions such as not shaking hands with candidates,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez said Comelec could come out with additional guidelines to minimize the risk of the spread of infection during such campaigns, but he said enforcement would be another matter on which they have no control over.
“The question is who will police and monitor (the implementation of the guidelines?). So it all boils down to individual responsibility from them candidates themselves. They should be responsible so their (campaign) movement will not become super spreaders during the pandemic,” Jimenez said.
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