“EPAL” politics did not happen overnight. It flourished because it was tolerated.
For years, the public has been conditioned to see names on roads, faces on buildings, slogans on government vehicles, and color motifs splashed across public projects — and to accept them as normal. What should have been questioned early was allowed to grow into a culture, one that reveals a deeper and more troubling mindset among some officials: the belief that public office entitles them to personal branding at public expense.
This culture of entitlement is at the heart of epal politics. It is the assumption that once elected, an official gains ownership over projects funded by taxpayers. That visibility is a reward. That credit must be claimed, even when it is undeserved. In this mindset, governance is reduced to marketing, and public service becomes a means to maintain name recall rather than deliver results.
The problem is not merely aesthetic. It is ethical.
When officials brand government projects with their identities, they blur the line between institution and individual. They subtly recast public services as acts of personal generosity instead of obligations of the state. Over time, this erodes democratic accountability. Citizens begin to associate services with personalities, not systems — making loyalty personal rather than principled.
The persistence of epal practices despite long-standing prohibitions exposes how deeply ingrained this behavior has become. Rules have existed for years. The reminders from the Department of the Interior and Local Government are not new. What is new is the growing impatience of a public tired of officials who act as if visibility equals virtue.
This entitlement mindset also thrives on silence. When violations go unchallenged, they are validated. When names remain on projects without consequence, they send a message to others in power: this is acceptable. This is how things are done.
But public office is not an entitlement. It is a trust. Authority is borrowed, not owned. And credit for government projects belongs to the people who fund them — not to those who temporarily administer them.
Breaking epal culture requires more than policies; it requires a change in attitude. Officials must unlearn the habit of self-promotion and relearn the discipline of restraint. Institutions must enforce rules consistently. And citizens must stop treating epal behavior as harmless vanity.
Democracy weakens when service is mistaken for self-advertisement. It strengthens when officials understand that the truest legacy of leadership is not a name on concrete, but a public that is better served — without needing to be reminded who was in office at the time.
