#NowPlaying Comelec Commissioner Bot Lim quits as finance chair of the Comelec (to protest the decision of extending the SOCE deadline). #StungbyDecision #Playlist Sting, King of Pain, featuring Lady Gaga (performed live)
Comelec Commissioner Bot Lim quits finance com to protest SOCE deadline extension
From the Inquirer: “ Stung by the decision of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc to extend the deadline for the submission of campaign expense reports, Election Commissioner Christian Robert Lim on Monday filed his irrevocable resignation as head of the poll body’s campaign finance office.
Now playing: Stung-by-the-decision Playlist: Sting:
“Lim said the extension of the deadline was illegal and that changing it constituted an amendment in the law by Congress. ” “For the record, it’s illegal. If you look at the law, it specifies that the filing of Soce (statement of contributions and expenditures) must be within 30 days [after Election Day],” Lim told reporters on Friday. ” “For me it is just so frustrating. Maybe, [the en banc] wants to take a different policy, a policy shift. Then maybe they should be the ones to run the office,” he added. Lim said he was disappointed that the groundwork they had laid out in 2011 to ensure the law would be implemented to the letter on the submission of the Soce by election candidates and political parties had been brushed off because of the decision. ” “We started it in 2011, baby steps then bigger steps in 2016. Now it’s back to zero,” Lim said. ” “Even in 2013, I was fighting for non-extendible rule but the en banc did not approve that’s why there was late penalty. But 2013 was just experimental and 2016 was the culmination. All our efforts went to waste,” he added. “Last week, the Comelec voted 4-3 in favor of the petition of the Liberal Party and its standard-bearer, Mar Roxas, to extend the deadline of the filing of the Soce to June 30. Roxas missed the June 8 deadline. “The commissioners who voted in favor of the extension of Soce filing were Rowena Guanzon, Arthur Lim, Al Parreño and Sheriff Abas. Those who voted against it were Lim, Comelec Chair Andres Bautista and Luie Guia. “In 2013, the Comelec also extended the filing of the Soce but imposed penalties on candidates and political parties that filed beyond the original deadline.xxx”
The Comelec website ( comelec.gov.ph ) is still down. And with it, the Precinct Finder is also down.
More than 7 million voters in the presidential elections eleven days from now are first-time voters. They’ve never set foot inside a voting precinct.
They turned 18 years old in the period June, 2013 to October, 2015 and registered in that period for the first time. Thankfully there is a precinct-finder, thanklessly it is down. The Comelec chair said that the Comelec website will not be opened because “it is still unsafe” (“Comelec website still down, unsafe –Chairman”GMA News online, Apr. 27).
99.9 per cent of our students in the University are first-time voters. As part of our civic duty, i gave the optional assignment next week that they could use the first 15 minutes of classes to go online and locate their precinct thru the Precinct-Finder of the Comelec website.
A student said it was down, and another student asked, what if it’s down for the entire week, how will we locate our voting precinct? (he’s 18). And i gave a feeble: “your voting precinct is most probably in the schoolhouse nearest where you live…locate the nearest schoolhouse… through…uhmm, by using…google maps…”
And that’s my “WordPress Discovery Challenge: Obstacles” post — Comelec officials were traumatized by the hacking, the Comelec chair said the Comelec website was still unsafe, therefore they have not opened it, there is no Precinct-Finder, 7 million first-time voters will have to rely on…google maps… Waze… a compass… stargazers… wind vanes… crystal balls… tea leaves…
(they’ll probably ask their mom… but we want our students to be independent 🙂 )
