Comelec probing Makabayan bloc’s red-tagging complaints

Commission on Elections Chairman George Erwin Garcia. INQUIRER PHOTO / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines — Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair George Erwin Garcia said the poll body has started investigating the complaints from the Makabayan coalition, including party list groups Gabriela and ACT Teachers, that they were the targets of a widespread misinformation and Red-tagging campaign on social media.

Garcia, in an interview with reporters on Wednesday, said the complaints had been endorsed to the committee that was created to enforce Comelec Resolution No. 11116, which contains antidiscrimination and fair campaigning guidelines for the May 12 midterm polls.

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Red-tagging is among the forms of discrimination in the resolution that are punishable as an election offense.

Garcia said the committee would also verify the complainants’ claims that their campaign posters were being defaced or removed.

A complaint for Red-tagging will “not be very difficult” for the Comelec to rule on because it will use as “guidance” the Supreme Court’s definition of the term, he added.

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The three groups earlier accused the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and military units of being behind the Red-tagging.

Garcia, however, said the perpetrators of the acts as mentioned in the complaints must be identified if a criminal case of election offense were to be filed.

“The question is, who will we run after? Isn’t it true that if there is a crime, there should be a criminal to run after, because crime is personal? It’s quite difficult to send an entire organization to prison. So that’s what we want to know—how [to determine] the responsibility and liability based on our existing resolution,” he explained. —WITH KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING