Stories tagged
‘joseph estrada’

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
Sidebar

Rebuffs & denials

by Karol Anne M. Ilagan

PCIJ tried to reach the political parties and candidates involved, with varying levels of success. Attempts to pin down Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda, for example, were rebuffed. According to his staff, they are simply too busy and referred PCIJ to the Liberal Party.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, August 10th, 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
Sidebar

Risky start-ups?

by Roel R. Landingin

A CLOSE look at election spending reports of seven presidential candidates and three political parties in the May 10 polls reveals that election campaigns are funded in the manner and mold of financing for risky business start-ups.

Money comes mostly from personal funds, family members, and friends rather than a wide network of supporters of the political party, organization, or movement. In business, these private-equity sources of funding are ideal for ventures with low success rates but high pay-offs that are usually shunned by banks and the capital markets.

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

Nat’l bets splurge P4.3B,
local bets P162M on ads

by Che de los Reyes

The net total spending on television, radio and print ads by the national candidates and party-list groups alone amounted to P4.3 billion across the 90-day official campaign period from February 9 to May 8, 2010.

Based on the PCIJ’s computation, 12-percent of the P4.3 billion corresponds to P517.3 million in expanded value-added tax (EVAT) revenues that should accrue to the public coffers.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Mock polls mock
idea of ‘youth’ vote

by Beatriz Bermundo, Katreena Cosme and Alexandra Francisco

For a certain generation, re-elected Senator Juan Ponce Enrile will always be known as the former martial law administrator and the inveterate coup plotter. But for the 2010 elections, Enrile won on a campaign pitch that he is a man committed to the text generation.

“Gusto ko, happy ka!” Enrile declared in campaign advertisements.

Read more... | Posted Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
The joys of automated democracy?

Joke the vote, pun the bets

by Camille de Asis, Ivan Lim, Mark Tare and Angela Poe

Barring last-minute surprises in the election count, the Noynoy-Nognog tandem will lead the next casting at Malacañang Palace in the next six years, according to funny-boned Filipinos.

Nognog, dark-skinned Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay in real life, will also be installed as the country’s “first black vice president,” they say.

Read more... | Posted Monday, May 17th, 2010
Presidential campaign: Month 2

Profligates, paupers,
have-ads, have-nots

by Che de los Reyes

THIS presidential campaign is turning out to be the most expensive yet in Philippine political history, but it is also a story of two extremes – profligacy and penny-pinching on political advertisements by the candidates.

In just the two months since the official campaign period began last February 9, six candidates for president racked up a daily average ad spending total of P10.5 million, or almost P633 million in 60 days. By contrast, the remaining three candidates had a total tri-media ad bill of zero, with data by media monitoring company Nielsen failing to yield a single print or broadcast spot bought by any of them.

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

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