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POLITICAL candidates for the May election want to send
“vote for me” text messages and campaign jingles to
mobile phone users according to Smart Communications
Inc., which with 25 million subscribers is a rich source
of votes.
The
company said the many requests from politicians who want
to do this not only through outright campaign messages
but also in ring tones, ring back tunes, logos,
wallpapers, among others.
This is
why Smart wants to know if the National
Telecommunications Commission will allow such
“electronic” campaigning, according to Rogelio Quevedo,
head of the regulatory affairs of the Philippine Long
Distance Telephone group, Smart’s parent company.
The
commission said it has no rules on the matter but that
it plans to issue rules on the use of text messages in
elections. It is still waiting, however, for the reply
of the Commission on Elections if the question of
whether such text messaging is within its rules.
“It is
not clear whether or not such jingles and contents will
be paid by the recipients or by the politicians owning
the jingles and contents as advertisements,” said NTC
director Edgardo Cabarios.
If the
recipients pay, then they fall under the
telecommunications commission’s circular on
unsoliticited text messages. If the senders pay, they
are also considered unwanted or “spam” messages and
therefore banned. “The undertaking is covered by the
provisions of MC 03-03-2005A,” added Cabarios.
NTC
spokesman Lucio Espinoza Jr. said the commission may
also use this circular to regulate election campaigning
using mobile phone text messages should the Comelec fail
to give it specific guidelines.
“There
is still no word from Comelec. We wanted to finalize
guidelines on campaign text drive since last month
before the start of the campaign season. But up to now,
the Comelec has not yet responded to our letter. If it
fails to give us the guidelines then we will write to
the cellular firms and tell them to observe the proper
procedures, in general, the text spam circulars,”
Espinosa said.
The
Election Code, or RA 9006, enacted in 2001, covers only
paid advertisements in print and broadcast. |
