Comelec, MMDA expand partnership for 2025 polls preparations

The Commission on Elections and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority signed a memorandum of agreement on Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at the MMDA building in Pasig City for the preparations for the 2025 elections. (Photo by Dianne Sampang/INQUIRER.net)

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) on Tuesday signed a memorandum of agreement to expand their partnership in preparing for the 2025 elections.

According to MMDA Chairman Don Artes, the agency will provide some of its assets to Comelec such as the command center, mobile command centers, body cameras, radios, deployable cameras, and personnel “to ensure a clean, honest, transparent elections.”

“We have new equipment that the Comelec can use for the elections. We have expanded the partnership so they could use our equipment for the elections,” Artes said in Filipino during the media briefing.

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Artes said the MMDA and the Comelec had been partners for years in preparing for the elections, but it was only limited to Oplan Baklas, an operation to remove illegally placed campaign materials and monitor traffic situations during the filing of certificates of candidacy.

Inspection of the MMDA’s Communication and Command Center. (Photo by Dianne Sampang/INQUIRER.net)

Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia expressed his gratitude for the partnership. He said the poll body was overjoyed as it was offered equipment and MMDA personnel, considering that Comelec’s resources are not enough.

He also underscored the importance of the whole-of-government approach in ensuring clean elections.

“When it comes to the business of election, it is not only the business of the Commission on Election. It should be practically everybody’s. We can always deputize agencies of government… Pero di ba mas maganda kapag voluntary binibigay sa inyo ang serbisyo? (But is it not better if the service is voluntarily given?),” he said.

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Garcia also said the Comelec would still use the Philippine National Police command center, but the poll body would mainly use the MMDA’s assets in Metro Manila.