CAMARINES Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has appealed to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to streamline its rules on the 45-day election ban on public spending, with the goal of expediting the Comelec’s action on pending requests for exemptions from this prohibition on fund releases or disbursements to “avoid or end the virtual shutdown of certain national and local government operations this campaign season.”

Villafuerte hoped the Comelec could speed up its action on pending applications for exemption from national government agencies (NGAs), government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs), and local government units (LGUs) by streamlining its procedures to, among others, give itself a deadline of 7 to 10 days to approve or disapprove requests from the time such Certificates of Request are submitted to the Commission’s Campaign Finance Office (CFO).

The former governor said the Comelec could also consider speeding up its process of approving or disapproving exemptions by doing away with the holding of a mandatory hearing to tackle each individual application – and just approve the request motu proprio or on its own initiative – if and when the applicant has submitted the complete documents and the Commission has already found merit in such a plea for exemption.

The Comelec could require the holding of hearings on individual applications, he added, only when the applicants have submitted incomplete documentation and/or have yet to fully convince the electoral body in their respective memoranda that their exemption requests were valid or meritorious.

Moreover, he said, the Comelec could further accelerate the process of approving or denying requests for exemption by decentralizing the process and empowering its regional or provincial offices to act on applications in their respective localities instead of requiring every applicant to present its case at the Comelec’s central office in Intramuros, Manila.

In pursuit of Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code, the Comelec issued Resolution No. 10747 in December 16, 2021, governing the rules and regulations on this election ban, including the prohibition on public officials or employees in government offices, GOCCs, and barangays from releasing, disbursing or expending public funds from March 25 to May 8 this year – save for specific projects or programs of NGAs, GOCCs, and LGUs that the Commission has exempted or will exempt from this order.

“Given this wholesale prohibition on the release, disbursement and expenditure of public funds, the inability of our electoral watchdog to act on all formal requests for applications in a more expeditious manner has virtually shut down certain operations of most agencies and local governments that have been compelled to put some of their programs, projects, and other official activities on hold while waiting for the Comelec to approve their requests for exemption from the spending ban,” he said.

“I would like to believe that the Comelec, in issuing Resolution 10747, is guided by the lofty goal of the Omnibus Election Code to prevent the use of public funds for possible vote-buying purposes during the election campaign period,” Villafuerte said, “but the apparently prodigious volume of exemption applications from NGAs and LGUs alike has probably overwhelmed our commissioners and prevented them from acting on all of these requests in [a] timely fashion.”

“I am aware of, and appreciate, the hard work that our commissioners have put in their tough job of deciding on each and every application, but I believe it’s physically impossible for them to act on each of as many as possibly 2,000 or 3,000 requests for exemption within 45 days,” he said.

Given the huge number of pending applications for exemption from NGAs, GOCCs, and from most, if not all, of the country’s 81 provincial LGUs and 1,594 city and municipal governments, Villafuerte said the Commission will have to streamline their process in the hope of acting on all of the pending requests before the campaign period is over next month.

What has probably aggravated this situation, he said, is that three of the seven Comelec commissioners have been appointed just recently and are “possibly in catch-up mode on so many other election-related concerns that the Comelec has to deal with between now and Election Day.”

“This means that for applicants whose exemption requests are not acted upon by the Comelec soon enough, some of their operations could have been placed already in suspended animation from the start of the election ban last March 25 up to the time this prohibition on public spending ends on May 8, or the eve of this year’s national and local balloting,” he said.

In CamSur, for instance, he said that provincial government officials submitted to the Comelec about a month ago in March their formal request for exemption from this election ban, but the Commission managed to hold its hearing on the province’s application only a week ago.

“Following the hearing in Manila, the CamSur provincial LGU had to submit a memorandum explaining why the Comelec should exempt the province from the election ban, and to provide supporting documents,” he said. “Our provincial elective officials are clueless as to when the Commission will decide to approve or reject their official request for exemption.”

“Replicate CamSur’s situation with those of the possibly 2,000 or 3,000 others that had similarly applied for exemptions following the issuance of Resolution 10747, and you will be able to fathom the magnitude of this snag or how countless government operations have likely been suspended by now because of the inability of NGAs, GOCCs, and LGUs to release funds for these activities,” Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte said a review of Resolution 10747 is in order, considering that alongside the activities of LGUs that could not be carried out effectively in the absence of their required fund releases, certain programs pertaining to the COVID-19 response and the global oil price spiral triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine have been suspended pending the Comelec’s action on whether or not to exempt these activities from the election ban.

A glaring example, he said, was the public uproar caused by the temporary suspension by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) – because of this election ban – of the fuel subsidies that the government is supposed to hand out to almost 265,000 transport beneficiaries, including operators and drivers of public utility vehicles (PUVs) who have been adversely affected by the over 50%-spike in the retail cost of diesel and gasoline since January this year.

“The LTFRB’s temporary suspension of its subsidy program has turned the election ban into an absurdity,” said Villafuerte, “because a multibillion-peso financial aid package has been drawn up by Malacañang with President Duterte’s approval, precisely so public transport operators and drivers can cope with the oil crisis by getting their cash subsidies now – and not later after the elections.”

The Comelec eventually exempted this subsidy program from the ban, following mounting criticism from various sectors directed at its temporary suspension, and LTFRB will resume releasing the cash aid to the targeted beneficiaries as soon as the Commission issues an order exempting this handout from the election ban.

Many agencies have also sought the Comelec’s exemption from the spending ban of their coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) response initiatives, he said, while the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was reported as seeking to be exempted from this directive in order to continuously distribute livelihood kits to typhoon victims and to families dislocated by the recent eruption of Taal Volcano, and the Department of Agriculture (DA) is requesting an exemption for its fertilizer and fuel subsidies for crop farmers.