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Senate President Manny Villar, who has not been shy in proclaiming
his intention in 2010, was quoted as saying that since there is no
law that bans politicians from endorsing certain products, it is up
to the public to make its own judgment on whether or not these
politicians are engaged in premature campaigning.
It took Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago to lecture
her fellow senators who have presidential ambitions, including
Villar, that there are actually two laws—Batas Pambansa Bilang 881
and the Omnibus Election Code of 1985—that make it unlawful for
any person to engage in election campaign or partisan political
activity, except during the campaign period.
Santiago, who knows her law, bewailed that some
lawmakers have resorted to technicalities in circumventing the real
intent of the law by hiding under the law’s definition that a
candidate refers only to a person who has filed his certificate of
candidacy. Since they have not filed their certificates of
candidacy, they are not liable under the law.
But everybody knows the intention of Villar and
the other presidentiables. To say that they are not engaged in
premature campaigning is a lot of baloney and the public knows that.
In the case of Villar, the violation of the
campaign ban is even more obnoxious. The jingle of the Nacionalista
Party, which he heads, is an undisguised political ad because this
early, it tells of the platform of the NP that calls on the people
to adhere to Villar’s ST or sipag at tiaga formula if they want to
prosper in life.
Santiago has called on senators with political
plans for 2010 to pull out their commercial endorsements or
political ads until the Commission on Elections can come out with a
resolution on premature campaigning.
Product endorsers
Sen. Manuel Roxas 2nd, president of the Liberal
Party, also came out recently with a full-page ad in the major
papers detailing his party’s platform. He has also a TV commercial
endorsing a laundry soap highlighting his “Mr. Palengke” image.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who also has not been coy
on his presidential ambition, has endorsed in a TV commercial a skin
treatment center that has supposedly removed his wrinkles while Sen.
Richard Gordon has recommended a brand of bath soap.
Sen. Loren Legarda, aside from endorsing a
skin-whitening product, had appeared in an infomercial on saving
Mother Earth. Incidentally, it took her former colleague at the ABS-CBN,
commentator Korina Sanchez, to expose that the skin-whitening
product endorsed by Legarda did not pass the required medical
standards.
On the government’s side, Vice President Noli
de Castro and Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman Bayani
Fernando are equally guilty of premature campaigning although,
according to them, they are only doing their jobs.
De Castro can be heard on radio and seen on TV
calling on the people to take advantage of Pag-ibig’s low interest
housing loans while Fernando’s huge posters that have sprouted in
major thoroughfares remind Metro Manila residents to observe
cleanliness and be good citizens.
Food supplements
But more than the endorsements by presidential
hopefuls, what Congress should do is to look into the proliferation
of food supplements, which are being advertised flagrantly as having
preventive or curative properties.
There should be a law that would regulate the
advertisements of medicines or food supplements that can supposedly
prevent or cure diseases ranging from gastric pains to cancer.
A well-known movie personality who, because of
the death of the movie industry, has shifted to TV hosting, is now
endorsing several products, including one that would stop the aging
process and another that would prevent liver diseases.
There are now several products that, based on
their commercials, would protect all your body organs from the
brain, to the heart, lung, kidney, liver, colon, and the nervous
system. If you take them all in one day and granting that these
products are effective, you will never get sick and would thus live
forever.
However, manufacturers have appended the escape
clause “No approved therapeutic claims” to their commercials as
a convenient excuse when their products fail to cure ailments that
they are intended for.
My God, if these products have not been proven
effective in preventing diseases, why are they being sold in the
market or heavily advertised in the print and broadcast media?
Pharmaceutical firms, with almost unlimited
budget for advertising and promotions, have even engaged the
services of prominent physicians as resource persons in medical
forums that they have sponsored in major TV and radio networks.
These physicians are reportedly getting huge consultancy fees from
these pharmaceutical firms. No wonder, these physicians do not
charge consultation fees to their patients for as long the patients
buy their products.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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