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PCIJ audit of election expense reports

All right to lie, cheat, bluff?
Election laws gray, untested

by Che de los Reyes and Karol Anne Ilagan

IT WAS 1992; Fidel V. Ramos had just been voted as president, and Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada as vice president. Presidential bet Miriam Defensor Santiago was crying foul, saying she had been cheated. She would later file an electoral protest, but the Commission on Elections (Comelec) was apparently more interested in something else: conducting its first ever audit of the campaign contributions and expenses of candidates for president, vice president, and senators for the then recently concluded polls.

The Comelec, then headed by Christian Monsod, seemed serious, and even formed a committee to examine the books of account of candidates, political parties, donors, and media entities. Lawyer Josefina de la Cruz, who became part of that committee, also recalls that the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Commission on Audit (COA), and the National Bureau of Investigation served as Comelec’s “counterparts” in the initiative.

Read more... | Posted Thursday, August 12th, 2010
PCIJ audit of election expense reports

Party-list groups, 4 top bets
conspire to skirt caps on ads

by Annie Ruth Sabangan, Karol Anne Ilagan, and Che de los Reyes

THEY are avowed representatives of the poor and the marginalized, but in the May 10, 2010 elections, 12 party-list groups allied with two candidates for president, one for vice president, and one for senator splurged a staggering P426.16 million on television ads that aired in the last two weeks of the campaign period.

Where they got the millions to burn for these candidates, despite their claimed poverty, is the ambiguity. But why they burned millions on political ads that featured the four candidates, not their party-list groups, is the absurdity.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
PCIJ audit of election expense reports

Top bets for Prez, VP, party-lists
in orgy of omissions, half-truths

by Karol Anne Ilagan and Che de los Reyes

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, the May 10, 2010 polls was the costliest ever in Philippine electoral history.

The top candidates for president and vice president alone spent P4.3 billion on political ads during the official 90-day campaign period, and another billion 90 days before the campaign commenced, according to Nielsen Media’s monitoring of tens of thousands of political ad clips.

But for various reasons, the May 10, 2010 elections could also go down in the country’s annals as a grand spectacle of lies, half-truths, and concealed truths foisted on the Filipino voters.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Venture capitalists or true believers?

Only 308 donors funded
campaign for presidency

by Roel R. Landingin

AS A veteran fund-raiser for presidential candidates tells it, there are fewer awkward moments in the campaign than a meeting between the candidate and a potential donor, especially if they are seeing each other for the first time.

Recalling one such meeting ahead of the recent May 10 polls, the fund-raiser says that what actually lasted a fleeting 15 minutes seemed to take forever. “They talked about everything else except the money,” the moneyman tells the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) on condition of anonymity. “At the end, when there was nothing else to talk about, the donor just said ‘By the way, here’s something for the campaign.’”

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Illicit list? Arroyo’s 977
‘midnight’ appointees

by Tita C. Valderama

LAWYERS at the Palace have been burning the midnight oil scrutinizing nearly a thousand appointments made by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in various government agencies, including state-run corporations, from January this year until she bowed out of office on June 30.

One lawyer says the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) has so far tracked 977 Arroyo appointments in the last six months of her nine-year reign. “The list is growing,” says another lawyer involved in the rigid review of documents on the appointments but who is too timid to be named.

Read more... | Posted Monday, July 19th, 2010

Wheels of justice grind slow,
results, audit of funds slower

by Malou C. Mangahas

NUMBERS – people, cases, funds – are a messy, maddening mix in the courts. The numbers defy all myth and romance about the majesty and dread that literature ascribes to the men and women in robes, and indications are they pose a perpetual challenge for the administrators of the country’s judicial system.

Indeed, attempts of the judiciary to keep a firm grip on its budget and fiscal processes alone have already triggered periodic delays in completing audit reports, as well as caused recurring disputes on compliance with budget circulars that should apply across the bureaucracy.

Read more... | Posted Thursday, July 8th, 2010
Advocates to Congress, P-Noy:

Rush FOI law, observe
disclosure rule even now

by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

THE 15th Congress must adopt, refile and pass with dispatch the version of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act that was aborted in the 14th Congress because of the feigned absence of a quorum on the last session day of the House of Representatives last June 4.

In a statement, the Right to Know Right Now! Coalition of over 160 civil society groups and leaders said, “the new senators and congressmen may do well not to repeat the processes so they can save valuable time and even more valuable taxpayers’ money.”

Read more... | Posted Sunday, July 4th, 2010
Can Prospero Nograles explain his wealth?

In 14 years, Speaker grows
wealth from P6.5M to P88M

OUT OF the last 14 years, lawyer Prospero Castillo Nograles spent 12 years as congressman of the first district of Davao City for five terms, and the last 27 months as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the 14th Congress.

A leader of the 12th and 13th Congresses as well, Nograles by 2008 authored 17 House bills and co-authored 86. He also helped pass laws, including the Rent Control Law, which limits increases in rentals, and the Anti-Money Laundering Act.

Read more... | Posted Monday, June 7th, 2010

Old-style politics, ads score
win, ruin of party-list groups

by Karol Anne M. Ilagan

IN A move that bewildered political analysts, 66 party-list groups went the way of mainstream political organizations during the three-month campaign period for the recently concluded polls and placed tri-media ads worth a total of P597.54 million, based on data from the media monitoring agency Nielsen.

But some big ad spenders among the party-list groups may be in for a very rude surprise themselves.

Read more... | Posted Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Nograles, House dared:
Lead, ratify FOI now!

by Annie Ruth Sabangan and Justine Espina-Letargo

Accessing data and documents in government possession is the common obstacle that truth and rights seekers from the media, the poor and marginalized sectors and civil society groups have to grapple with, in the absence of a Freedom of Information law that would effectively and fully enforce the Constitution’s guarantees of public accountability and transparency, and the people’s right to know.

Read more... | Posted Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

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