Malacañang on Tuesday urged the Commission on Elections to regulate the activities of candidates during the campaign period, particularly that of senatorial bet Rep. Manny Pacquiao, who was scheduled to go up the ring in a televised boxing match in Las Vegas.
Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr., in a statement, said it is the duty of Comelec to regulate the candidates’ activities, including that of Pacquiao’s fight.
As if on cue, Comelec officials called for a press conference late Tuesday afternoon and revealed that the poll body might ban the TV coverage of Pacquiao’s match if it would be a violation of the fair election law.
Coloma was reacting to Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon’s warning against Pacquiao’s televised boxing fight.
Guanzon said that while Pacquiao has the right to box, the live telecast “will have consequences on his candidacy.”
Prior to joining the legislature, Pacquiao was widely known as a world-renowned boxer.
Pacquiao is running for the Senate under the banner of Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance, an opposition party.
Binay spokesperson Rico Quicho dismissed Guanzon’s comments, saying it is best to wait for an official Comelec statement.
It was former Akbayan Representative Walden Bello, who is also a senatorial candidate, who asked the Commission to order Pacquiao to postpone his fight.
Comelec chairman Andres Bautista also asked Pacquiao to comment on the “requests” within five days filed against his upcoming boxing match that falls within the campaign period.
“What you should look at is what the Comelec decided in 2007, we do recognize that we don’t have jurisdiction in respect of prohibiting Congressman Pacquiao from exercising his profession, the only issue is whether or not we will use the power given to us during election period to regulate the airtime of public utilities,” Bautista said yesterday hours after their regular Comelec en banc.
However Bautista said that the Comelec en banc could not decide on the matter yet until Pacquiao files a comment on the two letters filed by Congressman Walden Bello and former Senator Rene Saguisag.
The Law Department, he said, recommended to order Pacquiao to submit his comment to the letter of Bello and Saguisag.
Bello recently sought for clarification on the enforcement of the Fair Election Act, asking the Comelec to require Pacquiao to go on leave from his boxing profession during the campaign period.
“He has all the rights to exercise his boxing profession after the elections but to schedule his boxing bout during the campaign period and close to the elections is obviously taking advantage of his personality and his profession, extending undue benefit to his candidacy,” Bello said in a six-page petition.
Bautista however admitted that the Comelec is powerless in ordering Pacquiao to temporarily go on leave from boxing.
Saguisag on the other hand asked the Comelec to direct the boxing champ to reschedule his forthcoming match.
“We cannot have this, him training and , willy-nilly, getting free publicity, in this nation. Please advise him to reset the fight whose income may not now be as expected, after his unfortunate remark about LGBT romances. Fans abroad may no longer be as much interested in a Pacquiao-Bradley match as before his unfortunate remark,” Saguisag said.
In 2007, Bautista said that the Comelec banned the coverage of the boxing match in Sarangani when Pacquaio was running for Congress.
But Bautista said the 2007 resolution was different from this case at hand since Pacquiao is running for a national office.
“That’s why we thought that the best course of action to take was to ask Congressman Pacquiao to comment on the letters that have been filed,” he said.