EDITORIAL - Clean up your own mess

Clean up after yourself: this is an admonition given as soon as children are old enough to understand the instruction. And most children do what they are told.

The same cannot be said for many candidates in Philippine elections. Days after the midterm polls, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority is lamenting the failure of many candidates to take down their campaign materials. And this is just in the National Capital Region.

Tons of campaign posters and streamers have been taken down by the MMDA, but the work is far from over. This has prompted an exasperated MMDA Chairman Romando Artes to suggest the disqualification of winning candidates who refuse to take down their campaign materials.

Losing candidates should also face penalties including stiff fines for failure to clean up their own mess.

Even before the official start of the campaign period, many declared candidates were treating public space as their private self-promotion areas, inflicting their images on the walls and fences of government buildings and public infrastructure, and posting materials even on prohibited spots such as electric posts, trees and utility cables.

To this day, many of the materials are still there. In previous elections, some campaign materials remained in place, especially those of reelected local government officials, all the way to Christmas and beyond.

This year, candidates ignored concerns raised by both environment advocates and Commission on Elections officials about the littering in public spaces and even the pollution of water resources amid the spike in the production of campaign tarpaulins.

With the general elections three years away, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources together with the Department of the Interior and Local Government must draw up measures to tighten rules against littering during campaigns. Penalties must be heavier if the violators are incumbent public officials, who are supposed to be enforcing local anti-littering ordinances.

In the meantime, penalties must be slapped on candidates, winners and losers alike, who lack the functional literacy and civic responsibility to clean up after themselves.