Sky’s the limit

The campaign period has not yet officially started, and already three of the main contenders for the presidential race have spent over half a billion pesos each on television advertising alone.

Even latecomer Rodrigo Duterte has reportedly spent P129.599 million so far. No figure was quoted for social media and “campus president” Miriam Defensor Santiago.

For 2015, the standard bearer of the administration Liberal Party (LP) was the top spender. Mar Roxas has reportedly shelled out P774.196 million so far on TV ads. Vice President Jejomar Binay of the United Nationalist Alliance came in second with P695.555 million. Sen. Grace Poe, who is running as an independent, followed close behind with P694.603 million.

A report noted that Philippine presidential candidates were spending more than their counterparts in the US presidential race.

Under Republic Act 7166 or the Synchronized Elections Law of 1991, candidates for president are limited to only P10 per voter in total campaign expenses. With about 54 million registered voters, all three candidates have already exceeded the legal limit of P540 million. And the official campaign period hasn’t even started. Maybe that’s when the official count for campaign spending will start? At this point, it looks like overspending no longer exists as an election offense.

The figures don’t include expenses for transport, communications and other logistics requirements for moving around an archipelago of 7,100 islands for face-to-face campaigning. There’s also the cost of public relations excluding TV ads, which for certain candidates includes maintaining a dirty tricks department. This unit employs trolls to respond to any negative online or social media commentary on the candidate. It can entail hefty legal and consultancy fees that can rival TV ad costs, for digging up dirt on a rival and disseminating it.

Compared to the cost of election-related black propaganda and character assassination, contract killings can be a bargain. The price of a real assassination – including the cost of the gunman’s perpetual omerta – is added to campaign budgets especially in local races.

Apart from the contenders for the nation’s two highest posts, candidates for other positions have also started campaign spending. The most obvious manifestations are the streamers and posters that are now polluting the scenery and exacerbating urban blight. From tree branches, power lines, lampposts and walls, candidates greet voters using every imaginable excuse.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec), emasculated by the Supreme Court in every effort to bring sanity to the election system, appears helpless in preventing the proliferation of these polluting materials. These are worse than epal; the materials are awful for the environment and aesthetics.

One streamer of average size can cost tens to several hundred pesos depending on the type of material used. Now that the Supreme Court (SC) has flung the doors wide open to perpetual campaigning, we can expect the proliferation of political materials to worsen in the coming years.

The SC ruling has given wealthy candidates an edge and made campaigning even more expensive. In several other democracies, an official campaign period is strictly observed and campaign finance tightly regulated. Acts that obviously constitute campaigning are defined.

Enforcing spending caps and limiting campaign activities are actually good for candidates themselves. Such measures level the playing field and bring down expenses. Spending caps mean fewer debts to repay in case of victory.

In our case, the sky’s the limit for campaign spending.

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How do candidates repay all those debts? In a perfect world, the only repayment should be exemplary public service, driven by the idea that public office is a public trust.

In our imperfect, dysfunctional democracy, debts are repaid throughout a winner’s tenure, often at public expense.

Repaying election contributions is the root of many corrupt deals. It’s the reason why we have so many incompetent, unqualified people appointed to public office, and the undeserving promoted ahead of the better worker. It’s why creating a meritocracy in our country is a quixotic aspiration.

With the SC ruling, perpetual campaigning has put additional pressure on candidates and political parties to build up ever-bigger war chests.

For the party in power, there is also greater temptation to juggle and divert public funds for partisan purposes, and to award anomalous sweetheart deals without public bidding to party supporters even if it is at the expense of public service.

This is one area where the much-hyped reform effort of daang matuwid or the straight path is missing. In fact an LP cabal led by its president, Joseph Emilio Abaya, has been accused of turning the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), notably the Metro Rail Transit, into a milking cow for partisan and personal purposes.

This is the first time ever for Pinoys to wait for months for vehicle license plates and stickers and driver’s license cards. This is also the first time ever that the MRT 3 is running without a maintenance provider, as both the old and new maintenance contracts are in limbo.

But at this point it would be a disaster for daang sarado, the LP and its standard bearer, under whose stint in the DOTC the maintenance problems started, to get rid of Abaya. Apart from being handpicked to replace Roxas as LP president and DOTC chief, Abaya is also a former military aide of President Aquino’s mom Corazon – the gold standard for joining the daang sarado administration.

So to no one’s surprise, Malacañang said yesterday that Abaya continued to enjoy the confidence of P-Noy. Even a horrific MRT disaster due to the absence of an expert maintenance provider is unlikely to shake that confidence.

With Roxas still lagging in surveys on the presidential race despite the massive TV ads and P-Noy’s endorsement, the LP needs to be more creative with fund-raising. So it is also unlikely for P-Noy to be enthusiastic about any proposal to regulate campaign finance.

In 2010, candidates themselves estimated the cost of running a presidential campaign at a whopping P2 billion. For senator, the average estimate was P150 million. How do candidates and parties recoup such investments?

For the return on investment in case of victory, there is no political will to change the system. The root of corrupt deals and patronage politics is firmly entrenched.