The next elections don’t start in another three years but Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Oscar Inocentes is  already thinking up ways to have candidates clean up their own mess — literally; while green advocates are urging winners not to post “thank you” posters and billboards to lessen post-election trash.

Inocentes said he would propose before the next Metro Manila Council (MMC) meeting to have candidates of political posts take down  campaign posters and other paraphernalia identified with them, even if they did not put them up in the first place.

Composed of the mayors of all cities and the lone municipality of Metro Manila, the MMC is the governing board and policy-making body of the MMDA.

MMDA General Manager Robert Nacianceno said that Inocentes hatched the “poster accountability” idea while leading clean-up operations along Taft Avenue in Manila last Friday.

“It’s a very practical solution to the problem posed by these campaign materials. Maski hindi ikaw ang naglagay, eh ikaw naman ang nakinabang (You may not be the one who put them up but it was you  who benefitted from them),” Nacianceno said, referring to candidates’ common defense that they had nothing to do with the spread of  posters adorned with their own faces.

Under Inocentes’ proposal, the candidates would be made responsible for their campaign paraphernalia, summed up Nacianceno.

The MMDA had earlier given itself until Monday, May 17, to rid the metropolis of unsightly posters, tarpaulins and other post-campaign litter.

MMDA Tactical Operations Center (TOC) Executive Director Luis Vergel de Dios said on Sunday that agency has torn down an estimated six tones of campaign  materials so far. Clean up chores actually began even before the elections, especially in places that were not designated as common  posters areas but were still littered with posters.