EDITORIAL - Abuse of state resources

Even if it’s not election season, there are government officials who don’t bother to draw a line between public and private property. So it’s not surprising that an election watchdog has reported the misuse of government resources during election campaigns by incumbent officials seeking elective office as well as by political parties.

What’s surprising is the relatively low percentage of observed misuses of state resources for campaign purposes. An expanded study would surely reveal a worse situation. The study, carried out in 17 vote-rich and income-generating areas nationwide over 14 weeks, was initiated by watchdog Legal Network for Truthful Elections together with the Right to Know Right Now Coalition. LENTE released the results of the “Abuse of State Resources” or ASR monitoring study last Tuesday.

Lente said a focused discussion showed that people had a hard time identifying instances of abuse of state resources for election purposes, and differentiating between legitimate social services and ASR by incumbent officials.

The study also interviewed 71 civil servants, 66 of whom said they were aware of legal restrictions on government employees on the conduct of election campaign activities. Whether this is representative of the majority of civil servants is unclear.

Incumbent officials seeking election, whether to the same position or another post, unavoidably enjoy certain advantages over their rivals. But such advantages can also be abused. In the current campaign, voters are seeing this in the blatant disregard by incumbent officials of rules on the display of campaign materials. They can also place roadblocks in the holding of campaign rallies by their rivals.

As part of efforts to prevent ASR, authorities have prohibited the use of social service programs and pandemic response activities such as COVID vaccination for campaign purposes. Yet the prohibitions are violated especially in areas with entrenched political dynasties.

Weak public awareness about ASR and the failure to penalize even blatant perpetrators have allowed the abuse to become pervasive. The study should pave the way for further research and drawing up of measures to prevent the misuse of state resources for partisan purposes during elections.