I wish I could be more eloquent , but I am not good enough to get my point of view across to all that disagreed with me.
I'm not the most eloquent either, but maybe I can explain what I understood from your words.
You say that it could be a conflict of interest, because the manager could use his ability to give merits to a certain user to increase his ranking and thus be able to participate in the campaign or have a higher level of payment. Doing so can provide one user with advantages over another.
For example: imagine that I was still a Hero, and a manager wanted me to participate in a campaign that only accepts Legendary. I need 50 merits to level up. The manager being a source of merit, would give me these merits to raise my level, and so I could participate in the campaign.
Was this your idea @philipma1957?
A manager can do this only if he is incredibly interested in a particular user. Personally, I doubted the reality of such a situation. There are quite a lot of participants on the forum who write good, qualified posts, and that is why there is serious competition when applying to signature campaigns. Why would a manager risk his reputation as a merit source by upgrading a specific user faster when he can simply choose another user with the required rank already?