On Election Campaign Violations

Glancing at the news, one can gather that COMELEC's concentration on posters makes it seem the only violation existing. The authorities are acting to the point of disqualifying the culprits specially if the violators are from mass movements (progressives) while staying mum on the traditional political groups (TraPos). 

This drive against illegal posters perhaps has some points, but, it deflects the attention to the more serious violations like frauds (undoubtably, there are), vote buying (in many forms), and intimidations of voters in favor of a candidate, etc.

These other violations exist and has to be taken care of more than poster a millimeter wider than usual. The election history of our country is filled with crimes and violations related to political campaigns many of which are still glued to the memory of the people, and those has nothing to do with political posters. And, beware, many of these politically motivated crimes are about to happen as the balloting day nears. Mind you, we are talking of murders, maiming of persons, kidnappings. We cannot pretend that it will not happen. It happens every election season, and no reason to think that it will not happen this time. It is rooted in our election history from the very beginning.

Vote buying is one of the most common violation practiced by political candidate.
I comes in many forms. Handing cash to voters is very obvious that it is now seldom done. But one other way to buy vote is with gifts of any kind. A candidate can also buy votes with promises. Promising is common even in other countries. There was a candidate in Europe who promised to return the taxes paid by the citizens for housing, and got away with it.