Editorial – A wrong practice

WITH the start of the filing of certificates of candidacy, Philippine elections 2010 has gone one more step forward, or, should we say, is starting to heat up another degree Celsius. The boiling point is still a bit in the future, but it will come as sure as the sun rises in the east.
But this boiling point varies according to geography, meaning there will be violence in many forms erupting in places where political rivalries have traditionally ended up in bloodshed. As soon as the official campaign starts, candidates in such trouble spots prepare for worst case scenarios, like harassments by goons of opposing camps. Such  acts of violence tend to escalate from mere harassment to bloodletting, considering that in the history of Philippine politics, guns speak louder than words.
It is also at this time that jittery candidates, fearing for their lives, request protection from the government in the form of armed escorts, usually policemen and/or soldiers. Police commanders will be hard pressed to provide such protection, especially with the Philippine National Police also committed to fight insurgencies in the countryside. By assigning personnel to fight the communist insurgency, the PNP will be forced to stretch its resources in men and material, thus having less personnel to deal with the everyday problems of criminality and security.
The standard number of personnel the PNP may assign to each candidate who requests for it is from two to four men. Undermanned police forces in certain places may not be able to afford to assign one policeman per candidate, leave alone two, three or four. It is common knowledge that rare is the town or city in this country where the ratio of policemen to population is adequate. It could be one policeman to every 500 or one thousand or even more residents. That’s hardly an ideal ratio.
On the other hand, a candidate who gets one, two, three or four cops for security purposes never had it so good compared to the rest of the population of his town, city or province. What makes these candidates so special as to merit policemen escorts whose salaries are paid for by Juan dela Cruz? If they fear for their lives they shouldn’t run for public office in the first place. The fact that they can afford to fund their campaign means they can afford to pay for armed escorts. There is a proliferation of security agencies from one end of the archipelago to the other who can provide candidates with security escorts. For a price, of course. If they can afford to spend so much money to entice voters to vote for them, surely they can afford to pay for private security guards to protect them from their perceived enemies.
This practice of providing police escorts to candidates is wrong anyway one looks at it. It is unfair to the rest of the population and ought to be stopped.