EDITORIAL – Lucrative campaigns

As expected, deposed President Joseph Estrada denied receiving $1 million from Taiwan as contribution to his presidential campaign in 1998. If there was any such money, Estrada said, it never reached him. And he said he was no friend of former Taiwan president Lee Teng Hui, who supposedly ordered the donation of the $1 million from the funds of the Kuomintang Party.

The United Daily News, quoting investigators, reported in Taipei that the money was funneled through the Manila account of Eric Lin, deputy chairman of the Hong Kuo construction group in Taiwan. Philippine prosecutors are studying whether the revelations in Taipei could be used against Estrada, who is held without bail for plunder. Candidates in this country are prohibited from receiving campaign contributions from foreign sources. Estrada could also be held liable for failure to declare the $1 million in his statement of assets and liabilities upon assuming the presidency.

Estrada already has enough problems, the worst of which is a possible death sentence for the capital offense of plunder. This could explain why Philippine authorities seem to be uninterested in following up the allegations about the $1-million donation made by Taiwanese financier Liu Tai-ying, who used to control the Kuomintang business empire. Liu said the donation was made on orders of Lee Teng Hui.

There is another possible explanation: Kuomintang contributions might have been given to candidates apart from Estrada. Enforcement of rules on campaign contributions in this country is so lax you wonder why there are rules at all. No one follows limits on campaign spending, and rules requiring the disclosure of campaign donors and the amount of their contributions are a sham.

This failure to enforce transparency in campaign spending has been a major cause of the rot in the country’s political system. Illegal campaign contributions helped turn politics into one of the most lucrative enterprises in this country. And the donors don’t give away their millions for free. A donor whose candidate wins eventually gets rewarded — in the form of a juicy government contract, for example, or an appointment to a public post. The nation is aware of the problem, but change isn’t going to come from national leaders, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the rotten system.