MOSTLY old, mostly male, mostly born and bred in imperious Luzon and all schooled in imperial Manila. Two in every three were jurists and bureaucrats in their previous lives, and thus, also mostly creatures of habit and routine. In the last 20 years, while 15 of the 80 nominees were female, only three women were eventually appointed.

This seemingly impregnable enclave of the elite is actually the Philippine Supreme Court, the most majestic of all the country’s courts, the final arbiter of constitutional questions, and “the last bulwark of democracy” in the land.

Yet unlike Philippine society, which is becoming more diverse with big numbers made up of the poor, the female, the young, and the rural dwellers, the high court is as homogeneous as when it was born in 1901.

And despite democracy’s rebirth in 1986, the Supreme Court remains an exclusive club, no thanks to the still largely opaque, weak, and snobby processes of two entities responsible for screening nominees and appointees to the tribunal: the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) and the President of the Philippines.

These are among the findings of an academic paper on the work and output of the JBC from 1988 to 2008 that was published recently in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

Titled “Averting Diversity: A Review of Nominations and Appointments to the Philippine Supreme Court (1988-2008),” the paper was co-authored by spouses Dante B. Gatmaytan, associate professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, and Cielo Magno, Fulbright fellow and Ph.D. candidate at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

The paper is “an empirical study on the nominations and appointments of Supreme Court justices” in the first 20 years of existence of the JBC, or since it was created in the 1987 Constitution precisely to open up the process to the citizens.

It offers a profile of individuals nominated by the JBC based on gender, age, geographical origin, academic background, and professional experience. As well, it explores “whether the appointing Presidents display any preferences based on personal characteristics relating the effects of these preferences to the diversity on the Supreme Court.”

Same, same crop

Among other findings, the study shows that the nominees and appointees to the high tribunal in the last two decades came from the same background. This homogeneity, the study says, “is sorely unrepresentative of Philippine society,” adding that future research on the high court may hopefully help “determine how this lack of diversity on the Supreme Court can affect the resolution of legal issues.” This lack, say Gatmaytan and Magno, “could also have implications for minorities who may not view the court’s decisions as legitimate.”

The data point to issues that deserve further scrutiny, the couple says. “Supreme Court nominees tended to have the same gender and age, to come from the same region, and to be trained in Manila,” they write. “All the appointees to the Supreme Court came from the same pool of hopefuls.”

Moreover, “with few exceptions, the Presidents appointed nominees with the same gender, age, geographical origin and legal training,” say Gatmaytan and Magno.

For some reason, however, the composition of the Supreme Court, and the social and career background of its justices has generated scant scholarly interest in this country. In 1979, it took an American, C. Neal Tate, to focus his doctoral dissertation on The Social Background, Political Recruitment, and Decision-Making of the Philippine Supreme Court Justices, 1901-1968.

Gatmaytan and Magno meanwhile say that their study on the 20-year record of the JBC from 1988 to 2008 is “necessarily preliminary” because of the dearth of publicly available information on the work of the body, and on the nominees it has screened for appointment to the high court.

“(As) others have explained,” they write, “the likelihood of obtaining documents from the JBC is ‘practically nil’ as requests for data are repeatedly turned down.”

Indeed, the duo obtained the information on the list of nominees and appointees from the inception of the JBC in 1988 through February 2006 through the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), in particular via the help of the late Alecks Pabico, at the time PCIJ’s training and multimedia director.

(A list of nominees toward end-2008 was submitted by the JBC to then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo but because she did not fill the vacancy sooner, those nominees were not included in the study of Gatmaytan and Magno.)

Diversity good

In contrast to the paucity of analytical studies focusing on the Philippine high court, a bounty of literature in the United States – in whose image, likeness, and procedures the Philippines has evolved its judiciary – has inquired into the traditional, political, and professional criteria that influence Supreme Court appointments.

Observe Gatmaytan and Magno: “The literature (in the United States) is thick with arguments that favor the constitution of diverse collegial courts… (and) that judicial diversity is a means of attaining judicial independence and accountability.” Many of these studies suggest, the authors say, “that the appointing powers should strive to create a more diverse Court by taking career experience as seriously as they do race and gender.”

Additionally, these studies say that “requiring prior judicial experience produces in the Court a homogeneity that prevents it from operating optimally.”

“The importance of these studies cannot be overemphasized,” write Gatmaytan and Magno. “Decisions are more likely to be regarded as illegitimate if the decision-making body, whether by a jury or judge, ‘is homogeneous, exclusive, and not representative of a cross-section of the community.’”

The scholars, citing various authors, also say that two arguments favor diversity in the high court – greater diversity “may increase the public trust in the court” and that “the diversity of information and views held by the justices will increase the total information provided to the Court, which will lead to more informed and better decisions.”

From 1901 to this day though, Gatmaytan and Magno note that Tate had found that the high court “constituted part of the political elite that was far less representative than most other elites.”

They quoted Tate’s study as saying that, “the under-represented regions” were “those with the highest population growth and low rates of literacy” or the very places “where social problems are considerably greater.”

The University of the Philippines, they continue, “supplied the majority of the appointees in the post-colonial period (from 1946) since they began churning out graduates in 1913,” and since 1962, “all but two of the justices graduated from the University of the Philippines.” In contrast, the colonial period was “dominated by graduates of the University of Sto. Tomas, the oldest university in the Philippines.”

Back then, as it remains so today, about two-thirds or 58 percent of the justices came from the ranks of the judiciary, notably the Court of Appeals. Then and now, too, Gatmaytan and Magno, citing Tate’s study, say that 25 justices came from the bureaucracy, “usually from the Department of Justice,” while the rest of the justices came from private practice, the academe, and politics. In Tate’s study, the mean age of Supreme Court justices was 57.1 and their mean tenure, 9.2 years.

Law vs practice

According to Gatmaytan and Magno, Tate also discovered that “there was no uniform route to a Supreme Court judgeship – recruitment to the highest court was not ‘simply the reward for long-serving, brilliant, or otherwise ‘meritorious’ judges, despite widespread public endorsement of this idea as a recruitment norm.”

At the very least, though, the 1987 Constitution had enshrined “safeguards to strengthen judicial independence,” including the creation of the JBC and having the appointment of all judges by the president  “no longer subject to confirmation” by the Congress’s Commission of Appointments.

But Gatmaytan and Magno say that there are disparities between what is written in the Constitution and the practices of the JBC.

As a constitutional body, the JBC is tasked to screen candidates for vacancies in the judiciary and then submit to the president the names of at least three nominees for each vacant position.

Created purposely “to limit the President’s discretion in the selection of judicial appointees,” the JBC is chaired by the Supreme Court chief, and should, in law, have only six other members.

Like the chief justice, the Constitution says the justice secretary and a representative of Congress will sit in the JBC as ex-officio members. The four other “regular” JBC members, according to law, are a retired justice and a representative each from the academe, the private sector, and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

In practice, however, two representatives from Congress sit in the JBC – the chairs of the respective committees on justice of the Senate and the House of Representatives – thus making for an eight-member JBC. In practice, too, all eight members, including the chief justice, cast one vote each for every nominee, including the three ex-officio members.

Rep. Niel C. Tupas, Jr. of Iloilo, the House’s JBC representative, tells the PCIJ that the Constitution allotted just one JBC seat for Congress apparently because the framers had thought that  the country would have a unicameral legislature.

And whether or not the ex-officio members can and should vote is a question that, he says, the JBC has settled by tradition and not by law. Explains Tupas: “Ex-officio here means ‘by virtue of’ our office, so we sit in the JBC as representatives of our chambers. Ex-officio here does not mean we don’t have voting rights. By tradition, all the eight JBC members cast a vote for the nominees.”

The Constitution, however, does not explicitly state that the JBC’s ex-officio members have voting rights.  A contrary practice exists elsewhere. In Republic Act. No. 4884 of 1966 (which created the National Police Commission or Napolcom) and Republic Act No. 8551 of 1998 (which established the Philippine National Police), two ex-officio members of the Napolcom board are explicitly stripped of voting rights. They are the secretary of Interior and Local Government, who serves as Napolcom chair, and the director-general of the PNP.

Frequent tryouts

Gatmaytan and Magno also found that in the first two decades of its existence, the JBC screened 80 individuals who have been nominated to the Supreme Court, in 35 rounds of nomination processes. But because some of them were nominated more than once – in one case nine times even – the JBC actually submitted a total of 208 nominees to the Supreme Court during the 20-year period.

“Twenty-nine were nominated only once while 51 individuals were nominated multiple times,” say Gatmaytan and Magno. “On the average, nominees were included in the list 2.5 times.”

This trend of several names reappearing as applicants and nominees for the position of justice is worrisome, say the scholars.

“Repeated nomination to the Supreme Court could indicate a shallow bench from where nominees are recruited,” they argue. “This does not augur well for diversity on the court.”

As it is, of the 80 individuals who were included in the list, 65 or 81 percent were men, and only 15 or 19 percent, women.

By background, a vast majority of the nominees came from government service: more than half or 63.8 percent from the judiciary, and another 17.5 percent from the Executive branch. The latter included commissioners of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the chairman of a Presidential Fact-Finding Commission on the botched coup attempt of December 1989. The other nominees came from private practice (8.8 percent).

In the first three screening processes it conducted, the JBC submitted only three names for each vacancy to the president, the minimum requirement in the Constitution. Later on, its lists enrolled an average of six names, with a ratio of five male nominees to one female nominee. On one occasion, the JBC list contained as many as 11 names. The study’s authors found no pattern of an increasing number of women nominees over time.

By island-group of origin, 75.6 percent of the nominees came from Luzon, seven percent from the Visayas, and three percent from Mindanao.

8 in 10 males

Out of the 35 screening processes and 80 nominees to the Supreme Court from the JBC, four Philippine presidents who served from 1988 to 2008 appointed 41 justices to the high tribunal.

The average age of these judicial appointees was 63 years, or just seven years shy of the mandatory retirement age of 70 years under Philippine law.

Also among Gatmaytan and Magno’s findings are that an overwhelming 78 percent of these justices were male, and only 22 percent female.

About half or 20 justices graduated from the University of the Philippines. Five justices each came from the Ateneo de Manila University and San Beda College, three each from the University of Sto. Tomas and Manuel L. Quezon University. Three others came from other law schools also located in Metro Manila.

All the 41 justices were educated in Metro Manila, but only 12 had pursued advanced degrees after obtaining law degrees.

A vast majority of 31 justices or 75 percent originated from Luzon, including 14 from Metro Manila. Only seven justices came from the Visayas, while three were from Mindanao (two from Davao City, and one from Zamboanga City).

Presidents’ quirks

In addition, the study reveals the unique preference patterns of the four presidents – the late Corazon C. Aquino (1986-1992), Fidel V. Ramos (1992-1998), Joseph Estrada (1998-January 2001), and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (February 2001-May 2010) – who appointed the 41 justices.

Ramos and Arroyo appointed 14 justices each for a total of 28, while Cory Aquino appointed seven, and Estrada, six.

Cory Aquino in truth appointed more justices before the JBC was born under the 1987 Constitution. When she took power in February 1986 after the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos was ousted by four days of massive people power rallies, she installed a “revolutionary government,” abolished the Supreme Court, and replaced it with an entirely new slate of justices.

Arroyo appointed Antonio Carpio justice when he was just 52, making him the youngest ever to be appointed to the high court. In contrast, Jose C. Campos, Jr. was appointed associate justice when he was already 69 years old, or just months away from the mandatory retirement age of 70. He served in the high court only from Sept. 3, 1992 to April 8, 1993.

Good-bye boys?

Still and all, all four presidents showed a predilection for appointing mostly grey, old men to the high court, or justices in their twilight years, or on the verge of retirement.

But there are fine distinctions among the four chief executives when it came to appointing women. Of the six justices Estrada appointed, three were women. Ramos, for his part, did not appoint any woman to the court, even though the JBC included women in its lists of nominees during his term.

Interestingly, Gatmaytan and Magno note that the two women presidents, Cory Aquino and Arroyo, “did not appear to prefer women when they made their appointments to the Supreme Court, keeping them to a low 28.6 percent of their (respective) appointees.”

The elite law schools also emerge as the favored picking ground for appointees of the four presidents. “Almost three-fourths (71.4 percent) of Aquino’s appointees were from the University of the Philippines,” write the study’s authors. “Macapagal-Arroyo follows with half of her appointees coming from the same university.”

Ramos appointed six UP graduates, and Estrada only two UP graduates, to the Supreme Court.

But by last job posting, all four presidents seemed to have preferred snatching their justices from the ranks of the judiciary and other executive agencies.

Five out of the six justices Estrada installed in the high court were former judges. The sixth justice he appointed was not from the judiciary but was still an old government hand: then Comelec Chairman Bernardo Pardo.

Ramos chose 11 of his appointees from the judiciary; similarly, Cory Aquino and Arroyo snared more than half of their appointees from the ranks of judges (57.1 percent).

Ramos, Estrada, and Arroyo looked to the north too much as source of their appointees to the high court; three-fourths of their appointees were from Luzon. By comparison, Cory Aquino picked four of her seven appointees from the Visayas and Mindanao.

Senior citizens

Because of the mandatory retirement age of 70 years, naming senior citizens to the high court has triggered a fast turnover rate of justices. Cory Aquino and Arroyo performed well in this regard though – the justices they appointed had the longest average tenure (eight years).

In contrast, Estrada’s appointees served the shortest tenure (five years), while Ramos’s appointees, 6.4 years.

This is clearly a regression from the time Tate did his study on the composition of the high court from 1901 to 1968, or before Martial Law.

In Tate’s time and study, 57.1 was the mean age of Supreme Court justices, and their mean tenure, 9.2 years.

In the Gatmaytan-Magno study, from 1988 to 2008, the mean age of Supreme Court justices was 63, and their mean tenure, across all four former presidents, from 5.2 to 8.1 years.

Before Antonio Carpio, it was a Ramos appointee, Hilario Davide Jr., who had served the longest or for 14 years. Davide spent seven of those years as associate justice, and the next seven, as chief justice.

If the incumbent justices were included in the sample, Gatmaytan and Magano say the justices’ tenure would inch up to seven years on average, but still shorter than the 9.2 years average tenure of the justices until 1968.

This would explain why the Philippines had 41 appointees to the Supreme Court between 1988 and 2008 while the United States had a mere seven during the same period. All seven were still at the U.S. high court at the close of 2008.

In 2009, seven more new justices were appointed to the Philippine Supreme Court. – PCIJ, May 2011

EIGHT YEARS ago in 2003, the PCIJ had exposed how the soldiers themselves were arming the enemy, by selling bullets and guns at fat discounts to rebels. To make matters worse, the transactions transpired at the very heart of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) command: the General Headquarters at Camp Aguinaldo.

That early, a New People’s Army (NPA) cadre code-named Ricky visited Aguinaldo on and off to purchase wares of war from soldiers. The bullets went for P5 a pop, even though the government at the time spent P14 to make or purchase each one.

The sale of guns and bullets by some soldiers to rebel groups and warlords is an old cottage industry, according to contacts from the NPA and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Then and now, government arsenals have become a dipping pond for rebel groups, thanks to soldiers given to making quick money.

More stories on anomalies in the military would follow, by the PCIJ and other media outfits. Talks about reforming the AFP would inevitably spring up after every story. Yet as the recent hearings on corruption in the AFP at the Senate have shown, such talk has resulted in little action.

Clearly, people and paper combine to affirm with certitude that corruption – petty, big, and bureaucratic – unfold with impunity, and has become massive and routine in the AFP. The stories that officers and men tell are validated in audit reports and official documents filed from years ago.  More than ample testimonial and documentary proof of corruption in the AFP exists. Yet it seems like officials investigating the issue simply do not know where to look, or just do not want to know.

For instance, the reports of the Commission on Audit (COA) on the AFP and the Department of National Defense (DND) from 2007 to 2009 alone speak of more tragic tales of corruption, with more real victims and bigger costs on the treasury. Among these:

• The AFP paid 184 “pensioners” aged 95 to 110 years old a total of P2.3 million in September 2009. This apparent case of ghost beneficiaries actually cost more, or P27.6 million, if the pension benefits were computed for the 12 months of 2009.  The average lifespan in the Philippines as of March 2010 is 71.6 years for women, and 66.1 for men.
• Aside from these centenarians, a random audit in 2009 of pension payments totaling P243.2 million showed that the entire amount went to 18,051 pensioners and their heirs without birth dates, and 4,220 other pensioners without addresses indicated on the AFP master list of retired personnel.
• From 2007 to 2009, the AFP signed 22 “perfected contracts” for supplies (binoculars, squad automatic weapons, hand-held radio, basic trainer aircraft, light support watercraft, patrol killer medium, 76mm ammunition, explosive ordinance disposal bomb suit, etc.) under the AFP Modernization Program. As of December 2009, copies of these “perfected contracts” had yet to be submitted to the Office of the Auditor, the COA said.
• Nine supplies contracts worth a total of P1.96 billion funded under the AFP Modernization Act Trust Fund and awarded from 2003 to 2006 had been marked by delayed deliveries ranging from nine to 181 days. But as of December 2009, the COA said the AFP had not submitted the delivery receipts for seven of the nine contracts, and in all cases, had not shared information on contract amendments and extension of delivery dates.
• From 2002 to 2009, the DND had not collected or could not explain a total of P918.2 million in “accounts due from National Government Agencies,” including
  • Multimillion pesos for such items as “construction of PGMA SONA school buildings (DPWH)” that apparently refer to projects that then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had promised in her State of the Nation addresses and entrusted to the Department of Public Works and Highways to implement, using funds tucked in the DND budget.
  • On Apr. 19, 2007, or three weeks to the May 2007 congressional and local elections, the DND released P549.7 million “to fund Foreign Military Sales P1-B under the RP-US Defense Assessment” that officers say need not be funded by the Philippine government at all.
  • In the last three months of 2008, the DND made several multimillion-peso fund releases for such opaque reasons as “for intelligence reform projects,” P11.3 million;  “to support program of expenditures,” P20 million; “to support program of expenditures,” P51.5 million; “reclassification of other prepaid expenses for procurement service account,” P5.9 million, among others.
• Cash advances worth P4.2 million for local and foreign trips made by officers and employees of the DND from 12 years ago remain unliquidated as of December 2009, including P1.5 million of the P3.6 million issued to then Secretary Gilberto Teodoro for three foreign travel schedules. Also listed with unliquidated cash advance of P346,490 is former Defense undersecretary Salvador Mison, and another P342,058, a general reportedly in the running for the position of AFP chief of staff.
• Cash advances worth P7.06 million remain unliquidated as of December 2008 in the AFP, including over one million pesos each issued to three captains who are special disbursing officers from the military’s Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) funds, and about a total of P1.8 million issued to seven officers from the Personal Services (PS) fund that should pay for the salaries of soldiers.

These and other adverse findings that COA has enrolled in its reports on the AFP and DND paint a sorry picture of a military and defense establishment too cavalier or negligent in how it handles public funds. Or as retired Commodore Rex Robles puts it, some officers and men in the AFP take “a very casual attitude about money… they think every problem could be solved by simply throwing money at it.”

Big-ticket deals

To be sure, all Philippine presidents after the EDSA People Power Revolt of 1986 had failed to rein in the AFP as it entered into various big-ticket procurement deals that were marred by kickbacks, collusive or negotiated bidding, conflict of interest, or sheer inefficiency and waste.

The return of democracy after EDSA had also democratized access to military contracts and turned money-making a free-for-all process in the AFP. This was in contrast to the nearly absolute control that strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos and his cronies wielded over public funds and state resources.

But the Philippines’ post-1986 presidents not only tolerated the corruption in the AFP, friends and associates of some of them are said to have even pushed some big, questionable contracts onto the military.

Beginning 1986, vested political interests started cornering AFP projects particularly in the acquisition of aircraft, boats, munitions, vehicles, and communications equipment. Soldiers then talked about the purchase of S-211 trainer jets from Italy’s Agusta company in the late 1980s by people close to then President Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino. After the delivery of 12 trainer jets, six more were ordered.

Together with two retired generals, Cory Aquino’s associates later formed a company that was the local partner of the firm British GKN for the supply of Simba armored vehicles. The company chose to be located at the former U.S. naval base in Subic after Fidel V. Ramos had already been elected president.

Under Ramos, a former chief of staff and defense secretary, the Armed Forces launched a Modernization Program in the mid-90s with an initial budget forecast of P50 billion.  It was not funded by Congress all at once, prompting a Ramos government proposal to support the program from the proceeds of the bases conversion contracts, along with the sale of Fort Bonifacio.

When Ramos bowed out of Malacanang in 1998, the government still had no money for the AFP Modernization Program. The billions of pesos raised from the sale of Fort Bonifacio are still not fully accounted for to this day.

‘Emergency’ purchases

Ramos’s immediate successor, Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, stayed at the Palace from June 1998 to January 2001, or only 31 months. He set aside funds for the AFP Modernization Program. Yet, soldiers and officers say that under Estrada, the munitions and supplies used in the “all-out war” against the MILF became the biggest source of corruption.

In recent weeks at the Senate, former AFP budget officer George Rabusa testified that back then, the military purchased apparently overpriced munitions from Thailand without bidding. But since there was an emergency at the time in Mindanao, the military justified it as an “emergency purchase.”

The conflict in Mindanao and the intermittent offensives that the AFP mounts there have become the usual, useful handles of the AFP top brass to justify so-called “emergency” deals that need not be submitted to competitive bidding.

Crystal balls?

In April 2008, for instance, the supposed “emergency” triggered by the violence that followed talks on the proposed memorandum of agreement on the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) was invoked by Estrada’s successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to justify the P1-billion “emergency” purchase of Howitzer and mortar rounds.

Perhaps the generals had crystal balls. Hostilities in Mindanao would not break out anew until August 2008, or four months after the AFP top brass recommended the “emergency” purchase.

But that was not the end of it. The conflict had already subsided yet the contract had dragged on for two more years as a political and legal issue. Many officers had favored the Israeli company Talon to win the contract owing to its track record in delivering supplies on time. But accounts from military insiders indicate that another contractor with links to a retired general stopped Talon. The general, the insiders say, promised to award the deal to a company with connections to one of his former Philippine Military Academy (PMA) classmates.

The insiders say the general, who was later appointed Cabinet undersecretary, convinced then Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro to stop the deal; Talon went to court. When he succeeded Teodoro as defense chief, Norberto Gonzales gave the contract back to Talon to resolve the case. As of 2010, the howitzers and mortar rounds had yet to be delivered.

Stellar performer

In truth, it is Gloria Arroyo who emerges as the stellar performer among the four post-EDSA presidents on two counts: under her, the AFP clinched more sweetheart deals with contractors, and also got a parade of 12 chiefs of staff, a number given to sprucing up edifices in the camps.

Military officers say that under Arroyo – who spent a record nine years as the country’s chief executive and the military’s commander in chief – numerous big contracts worth billions of pesos were awarded, mostly without bidding, for, among others, the repair of Jacinto-class Corvettes, as well as the purchase of night-capable attack helicopters, smaller multi-purpose attack craft for the Navy, radio sets, Kevlar helmets, and even assault rifles.

In the Air Force, officers refer to Peter Rodriguez of Asian Aerospace Corp. as one of the most favored contractors because of his closeness to Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo, as well as to retired Gen. Eduardo Ermita, who had also served as Arroyo’s defense secretary and executive secretary.

By the accounts of many officers, Asian Aerospace had lent Arroyo its Lear jets on several occasions for her travels in country, and sometimes overseas.

As Arroyo’s chief of staff starting July 2007, Gen. Hermogenes C. Esperon Jr. also signed a supplemental contract worth nearly P800 million for the repair of three Jacinto-class patrol boats, which were former British Royal Navy boats stationed in Hong Kong and acquired before the territory’s handover to China in 1998. The signing happened days before he stepped down from his post in March 2008.

The thing was that even before Esperon came in as chief of staff, his predecessor had signed a P1-billion contract for the repair of the same boats. In other words, for the repair of three second-hand patrol boats, the military was now committed to two contracts worth a total of nearly P1.8 billion.

Esperon, one of the generals implicated in the “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal, was supposed to retire in February 2008 but Arroyo extended his tour of duty so he stepped down the next month.

Sweetheart deals

According to AFP sources, contractors eyeing sweetheart deals usually start the courtship by offering all-expense paid travels to officers assigned to do platform studies, sign contracts, and disburse funds.  The same officers typically take more trips later, also expenses paid often by their hosts, during post-qualification tests or before a notice of award of contract is finally signed.

Hence, before even earning commissions from these contracts, overseas trips to the manufacturing yards or headquarters of these contractors have come to be expected by these officers as part of their “privileges.” Retired Commodore Robles says that many trips have meant staying abroad for weeks;  sometimes, the more fortunate guests get to stay for one to three months abroad, all his expenses billed on the contractor.

In the pattern of some contractors from the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom, South Korea’s government and some contractors from there have in recent years hosted some generals in Seoul. The Koreans have been angling for contracts ranging from the repair to supply of brand new and second-hand boats, trucks, and even the copper that the Philippine arsenal needs to manufacture bullets.

In the past, Seoul had given Manila old and obsolete F-5A/Bs and PKM (patrol killer medium) boats. These days, Korean-made KIA and Hyundai cars, and trucks often roll out of Army and Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio.

It seems like Seoul now wants Manila to return the favor. Seoul has been eyeing supply contracts that would be funded under the AFP’s Capability Upgrade Program that was launched in 2003 by then Arroyo Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz.  For a while as defense chief until June 30, 2010, Norberto Gonzales was also negotiating for a P5-billion Multi-Role Vessel for the Navy from Seoul. A seacraft similar to the Death Star mother ship in George Lucas’s epic “Star Wars” movies, the purchase would purportedly enhance the Navy’s sealift capability.

Edifice complex

Aside from forging big-ticket contracts, though, a number of Arroyo’s chiefs of staff had also shown a propensity for building or refurbishing edifices and infrastructure facilities, at significant costs on the AFP’s budget.

The late Angelo Reyes, who led the military out of the barracks in the EDSA People Power 2 revolt of 2001, had the defense department painted and then spruced it up with first-class toilets. Reyes had served as Arroyo’s first chief of staff and later, first defense secretary, from 2001 to 2003.

The late chief of staff Arturo Enrile, meanwhile, built the AFP a theater cum museum. Soldiers later saw the rise of the “Great Wall of General Abu,” referring to the walls of Camp Aguinaldo that were repainted and rebuilt under then Chief of Staff Efren Abu, as well as the enormous canopy that rolled out under Chief of Staff Benjamin Defensor.

The officers interviewed by the PCIJ agree on one thing: some contractors themselves trigger fund conversions in the AFP just so they could sell their wares. Among the tactics of these suki contractors, they say, is to advance payment for still non-existent or to be negotiated contracts by covering the expenses of some generals on local and overseas travel.

More graft lairs

At the Senate, former Colonel Rabusa has so far identified three AFP staff units as the most prone to corruption:  J2 (Intelligence), J3 (Operations), and J7 (Civil-Military operations).

Wittingly or unwittingly, he has skipped mention of what officers tell the PCIJ are also the virtual wallets of crooks from inside and outside the AFP and the Defense department: the AFP hospitals and medical services, the engineering brigades, and huge lump sums under the control of the most senior officers.

The latter includes items like Office Supplies Expenses; Food Supplies Expenses; Travelling Expenses (local and foreign); Gasoline, Oil and Lubricants Expenses; Consultancy Services; and several similarly opaque but separately funded items like Representation Expenses, Confidential Expenses, Extraordinary Expenses, and Miscellaneous Expenses.

These expense items – the easiest to snitch from and thus among the most abused by crooks – are the sources of what could be called bureaucratic graft in the AFP and DND, say some officers.

This is why the rank and file talks about how medicine bottles are filled or diluted with water at military hospitals. And while on paper, too much money has supposedly gone to buying hospital supplies and equipment, in practice these are often in short supply when soldiers are injured or fall ill.

Barter deals

Such an environment may thus help explain why some frontline troops have also taken to bartering their AFP-issued equipage for a quick buck.

At the lowest level, an ordinary corporal can sell his bullet to a sari-sari store in the remotest villages.  Troops say that a soldier can exchange one live .45-caliber bullet or one round of an M-16 rifle for a bottle of GSM (Ginebra San Miguel) or two cans of sardines.  With the blessing of the supply sergeant, a unit could sell sacks full of bullets to a local warlord or businessman or the unfriendly rebel units nearby, say some soldiers.

The records of the AFP abound with tell-tale signs of these barter-trade deals. To explain the loss of their guns and ammo, all that the traders have to do is file after-operation reports saying they have used up 100 rounds during one encounter with a band of rebels. The battle may even be invented, the number of bullets fired in a five-minute skirmish, bloated many times over. After all, whatever it is the troops say, fiction and all, would the generals at headquarters find out, or even care to find out?

Big, gray middle

Marines Col. Alexander Balutan, commander of the 1^st Marine Brigade based in Cotabato, says that at core, it seems like corruption goes unchecked because of the gray areas in the AFP procurement and budget processes.

“Sabi ko sa mga PMA graduates, since I graduated in 1983, I see to it my gray area is very narrow,” Balutan told the PCIJ in a phone interview recently.  “Kung very narrow ang gray area, you can easily discern black and white, right or left. You must maintain na klaro ‘yan or narrow.”

Corruption has unfolded, he conceded, because to some officers, the gray domain is a big, broad middle.

“There are officers after graduation who choose to make wrongs seem right, so the gray area becomes really wide,” said Balutan. “That’s when the decision becomes confused… Once a problem comes… they can no longer discern in a system that is unclear.”

He said the grayness of the situation has often been invoked to rationalize many crooked deals. “That’s the argument,” he said. “The gray area has become way too wide. If it’s very narrow, it would be easy to decide – there would be no room for argument, because you know it’s wrong.”

Being decisive about what is right and what is wrong is what troops in life-and-death situations at the frontlines deserve at the very least from higher officers, said Balutan.

“Because if you’re a soldier in battlefield, your decision needs to be exact because you’re talking about people’s lives,” he said. “You can’t say, wait a minute or that you’re not sure. That’s how (clear) it also should be in managing the AFP’s funds and resources.” – With reporting by Ed Lingao and Jaemark Tordecilla, PCIJ, February 2011

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.

De la Cruz says Comelec issued subpoenas to the parties concerned and that teams were assigned to visit the offices of candidates, parties, and even TV and radio networks. The teams examined the books of account of the candidates and parties, as well as the broadcast logs of the TV networks, to discern possible violations such as unlawful expenditures and overspending.

Unfortunately, De la Cruz – now Comelec secretary – can no longer recall the committee’s findings, including if there were candidates who overspent or violated certain provisions in the law. She also says whatever documents there were in connection with the audit were burnt in the fire that razed the old Comelec building three years ago.

Can’t, won’t audit

Eighteen years after that attempt to check up on campaign contributions and expenses, Comelec is first to admit it has no idea how to carry out a competent audit on these despite the volumes of documents it requires candidates, political parties, and media entities to submit.

Its inability to fully exercise its authority in ensuring compliance with campaign finance laws, however, may not only be due to a lack of resources and skilled personnel, but also because ambiguities in the laws themselves have led to confusion within and outside of Comelec.

Elections lawyer Luie Guia observes, “The gray areas in the rules and guidelines on campaign finance give candidates leeway (to circumvent the law). So even if what they’re doing is wrong, it’s hard to go after them.”

On the surface, the rules seem simple enough. Campaign expenditure limits, for example, are defined in Republic Act No. 7166 or the Synchronized Election Law, which states that candidates for president and vice president are allowed to spend only a maximum of P10 per registered voter. Political parties, meanwhile, are allowed to spend a maximum of P5 per registered voter.

For the May 10, 2010 elections, the number of registered voters reportedly reached 50.7 million. This means then that candidates for president and vice president could spend only up to P507 million each while political parties would have to stop spending once they each reached P253.5 million. In theory, a candidate for president may spend up to a total of P760.5 million – that is, if the political party decided to spend all its campaign funds solely for its bet’s benefit.

At least that is how several political parties and candidates interpreted the rules. Comelec Law Department director Ferdinand Rafanan, however, says that the amount that a political party could spend for its candidate should not be considered as an “additional” spending limit to be computed “on top” of that candidate’s P507-million limit.

That, says Guia, is a “strict interpretation” of the law. To the officer of the civic group Libertas (Lawyers’ League for Liberty),the issue is about how candidates and political parties “book” the spending.

He argues that a political party, being a political entity, has its “own allowable spending limit.” A party may thus spend its money to promote the candidacy of its members running in the elections, he says. Guia also says that while the amount spent needs to be reflected in the party’s SECE, it does not necessarily need to be included in those of the beneficiary candidates.

He concedes, though, that there might indeed be something amiss when a political party spends all its funds to promote only one candidate, as in the case of the Nacionalista Party (NP) donating all its political-ad airtime to its standard bearer, Senator Manuel Villar Jr.  Still, says Guia, the practice is “not automatically illegal.”

Obscure definitions

“The problem really stems from a lack of clear definition in the law on what it means for a political party to campaign,” he says.

A party’s decision to spend all of its money for one candidate, continues Guia, could then be interpreted to mean that “the party is campaigning for its own victory,” as in the case of NP and Villar. In truth, NP candidates for senator and other posts came out with solo political ads or had joint ads with other fellow NP members running for office. These, however, were booked in the name of the individual candidates.

This legal gray area has been exploited by candidates for “practical” campaign considerations, says Guia. But he says the bigger cause for concern is how to trace where political parties are getting their campaign funds.

The SECEs of candidates, political parties, and party-list groups that the law requires them to submit 30 days after the polls are supposed to help Comelec do this. After all, the SECE even comes with 10 annex forms to enable a candidate or party to make full and extensively detailed disclosure of the contributions received and expenditures incurred.

PCIJ’s review of the SECEs of candidates for president, vice president, political parties, and party-list groups, however, reveals that most candidates and parties filed only summary reports. Many even missed including the “minimum details” required by law, such as the date and official receipt numbers of expenditures incurred; the full name of contributors and their addresses; the nature and amount of contribution; and the contributor’s taxpayer ID number.

Some political parties and several candidates did not submit SECEs at all.

Media in breach, too

The same blatant disregard for the law was evident as well among media outfits, which are required to submit advertising contracts, broadcast logs, and certificates of performance to Comelec. These documents are supposed to help the election body check the veracity of the campaign spending claims of candidates and political parties.

But many media entities failed to submit any of the required documents at all. Those that did meanwhile had incomplete papers, with letters of acceptance from candidates who received donated political ads among the usual missing documents.

Then there were broadcast outfits that submitted broadcast orders in lieu of advertising contracts, saying that using contracts “in long form” is generally not practiced in the industry. This particular issue has become the subject of a petition filed by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) with Comelec.

At the very least, the KBP can expect no sympathy from Comelec Law Department head Rafanan, who says these orders, which are not signed by candidates, would not exactly be useful for the electoral body’s campaign-expense monitoring.

Everybody happy?

By now, however, everyone has caught on to the fact that Comelec does not really scrutinize the papers it requires candidates, political parties, and media institutions to submit in compliance with campaign-finance laws. Rafanan himself seems to have given up on the task, even as he describes the general attitude of those being required by Comelec to submit documents this way: “It’s the old kind of thinking. Nobody cares. Everybody’s happy. Why disturb it?”

Guia says part of the problem could also be because penalties for “serious” election-law violations are indistinguishable from those for “less serious” ones.

For instance, candidates who overspend, falsify reports, and receive contributions from prohibited sources can be meted jail terms of one to six years – just like those found guilty of exceeding the prescribed campaign poster size of two feet by three feet.

Then there are the relatively light punishments for such things as the failure to submit the SECE, which carries an administrative fine ranging from P1,000 to P30,000, at the discretion of the Commission.

Even Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez points out: “They’re spending more than a million. More than a hundred million. Tapos P30,000 matatakot sila? (Why would they be afraid of P30,000?)”

Comments Guia: “The corresponding penalties should be clearly identified for each offense, depending on the policy principle (that one wishes to uphold).” Yet even the most painful of punishments will fail to deter would-be law violators if it is plain to everyone that it is all threat and no action.

Worse, existing laws leave out equally important issues that need to be addressed. Among these is the absence of caps on the amount of donations that a candidate or political party may receive.

Political investment

In the May 2010 elections, six candidates for president (Aquino, Villar, Estrada, Teodoro, Perlas, Madrigal) alone raised combined total donations of P1.5 billion, based on the SECEs they submitted to Comelec. This amount came from only 238 donors, of whom about half, or only123 donors, gave P1 million or more.

If the amount of money that a candidate may receive from a single entity – whether a corporation or a person – would be limited, a candidate would be forced to raise money from more people, says Guia. This, in effect, would spread the “political investment” in the campaign, making it more grassroots based, he says. This would also prevent a winning candidate from “favoring” a limited number of groups or individuals that have donated huge sums to his campaign.

Guidelines on what candidates should do with unspent campaign contributions are lacking as well. Last year, then Pampanga representative and presidential son Juan Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo  (now representative of a party-list group of security guards and tricycle drivers) created a stir when he attributed a jump in his wealth partly to campaign contributions that he received while still a candidate.

It has been suggested that since political parties enter into various transactions and operate much like corporate entities, they should be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This would then force them to open their books of account to the public, thereby promoting transparency.

At present, political parties are required to register only with Comelec, which hasn’t been much help to anyone – even those within the commission itself – to look at the financial dealings of these groups more closely.

Task too huge

For sure, no one doubts the sheer enormity of the task involved in campaign finance monitoring. It’s a responsibility that currently belongs to Comelec’s Law Department – the same unit whose long to-do list already includes investigating criminal offenses, providing legal opinion to the commission, accrediting political parties and party-list groups.

“I think the task is too huge,” says Rafanan of monitoring possible violations of campaign-finance laws. He adds that he doesn’t think his department can do it “on its own.”

“I can only see the entire Comelec doing it,” he says.

Guia, for his part, says a better option may be to set up a separate unit within Comelec that would focus on campaign finance monitoring and regulation. He also says improving campaign finance laws would be done either through statutory reform — by amending existing legislation – or through regulatory reform, to be implemented by Comelec.

“If the government had been able to set aside P11 billion for the automated elections,” says Guia, “this is also an important aspect of the elections that should be given attention.”

He repeats that existing campaign-finance laws need to be revisited. After all, he says, “Unrealistic laws encourage violations, and violations promote a ‘culture of disregard for the law.’”  - With additional research and reporting by JC Cordon, PCIJ, August 2010

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.

To be sure, these presumed defenders of the powerless and voiceless seem to have allowed themselves to be used as front and proxy of the powerful in band — a first time in Philippine political history. But did the party-list groups use the candidates for money or other, or did the candidates, the party-list groups?

It was a quirky exchange to say the least, although there appears to be an attempt to defy election laws on campaign spending limits.

The party-list groups got some exposure when their names were flashed for a fleeting second in the last frame of the ads of Liberal Party candidates Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III and Manuel Roxas II, Nacionalista Party’s Manuel B. Villar Jr., and re-electionist senator Juan Ponce Enrile.

By then, these candidates had nearly maxed out their campaign airtime limits. But with the party-list groups as surrogates, they managed to lodge more ads on television.

Yet it seemed like an unfair exchange for the party-list groups. It was like having two riders on a bicycle, one positioned behind the other – the front rider (politician) basked in the glory of the limelight, and the back-rider (party-list group) wallowed in his shadow.

The advertising contracts and booking orders that media agencies submitted to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) enrolled these party-list groups as both the buyers and the products of millions of pesos worth of political ads with ABS-CBN Corp., GMA 7 Network, and TAPE Inc., producer of the popular noontime variety show, “Eat Bulaga.”

A number of the parties declared these advertisements as part of the costs they incurred in the Statement of Electoral Contributions and Expenditures (SECE) that they filed with the Comelec.

The actual TV ad clips and documents support the fact or irony that the supposed “marginalized” party-list groups spent millions to support well-funded national candidates.

Aquino’s party-list groups

In mid-April, Aquino began winding down his TV ads because he was about to breach his airtime limits. Suddenly, however, six party-list groups endorsing his candidacy ramped up their ad buys on TV – with Aquino and his running mate Roxas as their veritable poster boys.

The ads by these party-list groups increased progressively in volume until the campaign period’s last day, May 8.

These six pro-Aquino party-list groups are the Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines (AGAP), Akbayan! Citizen’s Action Party (Akbayan), An Waray, Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Kaakbay), Parents Enabling Parents (PEP), and Bagong Bayan na Nagtataguyod ng Demokratikong Ideolohiya at Layunin (BANDILA).

Akbayan, Kaakbay, and PEP booked similar versions of ads that had Aquino and Roxas as talking heads.

Devoid of any hints to the platforms and identities of the party-list groups, but full of motherhood statements, the ads, with end tags that alternately named the three groups, showed Aquino and Roxas promoting their candidacies.

In the first ad, Aquino was shown endorsing Roxas, saying his running mate was already with him when he started his campaign toward the “daang matuwid” (straight path). It ended with Aquino urging viewers to help him further strengthen his partnership with Roxas through voting for the latter.

The second ad showed Aquino and Roxas both clad in barong with the image of “daang matuwid” as their background. The ad ended with the candidates saying, “Kayo ang aming lakas (You all are our strength).”

Akbayan even had a separate ad that featured Aquino being endorsed by a taxi driver, an aguador (water-carrier), a student, and a housewife. The ad ended with another motherhood statement saying, “Noynoy Aquino at Akbayan Partylist, Ipapanalo ang Mamamayan.”

Meanwhile, AGAP and An Waray promoted the candidacy of Aquino in their ads that used Batangas Governor Vilma Santos-Recto and Senator Francis Escudero as endorsers.

In AGAP’s ad, Recto said, “Noy, ang sabi mo kami ang iyong lakas. Ang sagot namin, ikaw ang aming pag-asa (Noy, you said we are your strength. Our answer, you are our hope).”

In An Waray’s ad, Escudero was shown talking about his kind of president (“Ang Presidente Ko”). Photos of Aquino with his family and while at work were also shown on TV.

Meanwhile, BANDILA’s ad of Aquino with then vice presidential candidate Jejomar Binay of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), was shown on TV from May 6 to 8, the last three days of the campaign period.

Villar’s party-list groups

To Aquino’s six, Villar, the lone billionaire among the nine candidates for president, also marshaled six party-list groups behind his candidacy.

The groups bought TV ad spots that invariably featured the candidacy, image, and message of Villar, who finished only third in the race.

These are the Association of Administrators, Professionals and Seniors (AAPS); Alyansa ng mga Grupong Haligi ng Agham at Teknolohiya Para sa Mamamayan (AGHAM); Alay Buhay Community Foundation (Alay Buhay); Buhay Hayaan Yumabong (Buhay); Butil Farmers Party (Butil); and Pwersa ng Bayaning Atleta (PBA).

One version of the ads was that of Butil, which featured Villar’s mother, Curita ‘Nanay Curing’ Bamba Villar. Butil got token mention in the ad’s tagline, “Manny Villar at Butil Party List, Galing sa mahirap, tumutulong sa mahihirap (From the poor, helping the poor).”

Another was AGHAM’s ad that extolled Villar’s record in providing poor sectors housing, jobs, and education. But the exposure that AGHAM got from its own ad was a mere mention of its name in the last frame with this tagline: “Manny Villar at AGHAM Party List, Karanasan, Kakayahan, Kontra Kahirapan (Experience, Capability, Anti-Poverty).”

Other ads from AAPS, Alay Buhay, Buhay, and PBA had the same contents that centered on Villar. In fairness, Buhay and PBA also had TV ads that talked only about their own respective advocacies minus Villar. These ads, however, were rendered almost irrelevant by the sheer frequency of their ‘tandem ads’ with Villar.

Dangerous benevolence

Yet if party-list groups think these supposed acts of selflessness and generosity in favor of their candidates is not bad, they have another think coming. Such benevolence, according to Comelec Law department head Ferdinand Rafanan, could actually put them in possible penalty of campaign finance laws.

Rafanan explains that the ads are considered donations of the party-list groups to Aquino and Villar because it was the two candidates who were the main beneficiaries of the aired election propagandas.

Rafanan says the candidate or the party treasurer must issue a letter of acceptance or a statement authorizing the donor to incur expenses on his or her behalf. Otherwise, the donor is unauthorized to incur election expenditure, which is in violation of Section 103 of the Omnibus Election Code of the Philippines.

The provision states: “No person, except the candidate, the treasurer of a political party or any person authorized by such candidate or treasurer shall make any expenditure in support of or in opposition to any candidate or political party.”

Incurring expenditures for a candidate without the letter of acceptance or authorization as proof of campaign donation is an election offense, says Rafanan.

Any person found guilty of the offense shall be punished with up to six years of imprisonment and will be disqualified to hold public office.

Meanwhile, a political party found guilty shall pay a fine of P10,000, which shall be imposed upon such party after criminal action has been instituted in which their corresponding officials have been found guilty.

After going through the piles of documents submitted by media entities and the candidates to the Comelec, the PCIJ found out that not one of the 12 party-list groups had a letter of acceptance authorizing them as donors of either Aquino or Villar.

The PCIJ sent a letter to the Liberal Party asking if Aquino or Roxas issued letters of acceptance to party-list groups.

The brief reply of lawyer Doris G. Ramirez, LP’s deputy director general for finance and legal affairs, through a text message was, “With regard to the ads of other partylists, those were not donations to Liberal Party nor is LP in any manner involved in it.”

For its part, Kaakbay said that Rafanan’s opinion did not represent that of Comelec. Its first nominee, Alain Pascua, also said that Kaakbay did not receive any resolution or communication from Comelec saying that its ads were considered as donations to Aquino and Roxas.

Akbayan treasurer Arlene Santos, meanwhile, maintained that all of “Akbayan’s ads were paid for by Akbayan, and thus they are ads of the party, and were not donated to any other candidate.”

Santos argued that the Comelec’s position during the campaign period was that all ads “would be considered as being for a particular party or candidate based on the official record of the station/publication as to which candidate or party paid for it.”

Through several calls and letters, the PCIJ tried but failed to get the side of An Waray, PEP, and Bandila on the issue.

Villar ‘buys’ Butil airtime

Interestingly, the PCIJ found one document attached to the advertising contract of Butil that authorized Villar to pay for the campaign ads of the group.

The undated letter signed by Butil Party chairman Agapito H. Guanlao and submitted to the Comelec states that the signatory is “authorizing SEN. MANNY VILLAR to place in behalf of the Party, One Hundred Twenty (120) minutes of television airtime for advertising for the 2010 National Elections in accordance with R.A. 9906,” or the Fair Election Practices Act.

The letter also authorized Villar to spend money in the party’s name. The letter states that Villar’s authority “shall include the right to incur expenses in the name of the Party up to One Hundred Million Pesos (P100,000,000)” as well as “the right to contract with STARCOM PHILIPPINES to make the said placements.”

In a phone interview with the PCIJ, Guanlao explained that his party agreed to the arrangement because Villar would “subsidize” Butil’s ads. “Sila ang maghahanap ng contribution (They will seek contributions).”

Paolo, Villar’s son, together with a representative of Starcom, was the one who coordinated the agreement with Butil, according to Guanlao.

Pioneer in pol ads

Apart from these party-list groups, there was Akap-Bata, which started the forays into expensive political ads by marginalized groups when it aired TV ads on February 26 using Villar’s at the time very popular “Dagat ng Basura” jingle.

Unlike the “tandem ads” of other party-list groups however, Akap-Bata’s ads did not show Villar’s face or name. In interviews, Akap-Bata first nominee Joy V. Alcantara vehemently denied any association by her group to Villar, but admitted that both her group and Villar “benefited” from their use of the jingle.

Based on the ad contracts signed by Alcantara and telecast orders issued by her group’s media agency PHD Media Network 2006 Inc, Akap Bata bought ads on ABS-CBN and Tape Inc. worth about P40 million.

Following a deluge of negative reports on Akap-Bata’s ties with Villar, the group’s media agency issued a memo on March 11 cancelling a number of these ad spots. Despite this, Akap-Bata’s ads that actually aired amounted to about P39 million.

In its SECE, however, the group reported a much lower spending on campaign ads of P30.19 million, and receiving donations of P30.47 million. The group had said it raised money “from donations, pledges and contributions from members, fellow child advocates and well-off allies.”

First in party-list history

It could very well be the first time in the history of the 15-year-old party-list system introduced in the May 1998 polls that party-list groups used costly TV ads for their campaigns.

The supposedly poor party-list groups representing marginalized sectors, used to campaign on the ground and win the polls through their mass base of supporters from the grassroots level.

Like in the case of old-timers Butil, Akbayan, Buhay, Agap, and An Waray, party-list groups previously won in the polls without allying themselves with any traditional politicians.

But this year’s elections differed from the previous ones, with party-list groups now having millions of pesos and a willingness to be identified with so-called ‘trapos’ or traditional politicians, whom they used to disassociate with.

This unusual set-up prompts the question: If the groups still claim that they are representing the marginalized sectors and thus have members who are poor, where could the multimillion-peso funds that they used to pay for their TV ads come from?

When queried by PCIJ, most of the groups denied that the funds for the costly TV ads came from the camps of Aquino and Villar. Most of them also denied that the money solely came from them.

The rather vague explanation offered was that the funds were either pulled from “common” resources or were donated by common supporters of their groups and that of Aquino and Villar.

“Not a single centavo came from Villar,” AGHAM Rep. Angelo Palmones recently told the PCIJ in a phone interview. He said that his personal friends, who also happened to be Villar’s friends, helped AGHAM raise campaign funds.

This was also the claim of Butil’s Guanlao in denying that Villar put money into the group’s pocket. “Walang dumaang pera sa amin (No amount of money was coursed through us).”

Akbayan’s Santos, a signatory in the advertising contracts of her group, also said that the money that was used to pay for the ads came from “contributions made by those who supported the partnership of Akbayan and Noy.”

“It’s a case of sharing of resources to advance shared advocacies made possible by our common friends and supporters who contributed and financed the TV ads,” Kaakbay’s Pascua said in a statement.

AGAP’s legal counsel Erwin L. Aguilera said the money used to place the ads came from the group’s donors who were mostly farmers and those who were into agri-business. “Galing ito sa mga tao ng naniniwala sa programa ng AGAP (This came from people who believe in AGAP’s program).”

He even said that the Lipa City-based party-list group, which helps poor farmers, “has a working relationship” with re-elected Governor Santos-Recto and that their alliance with her greatly helped AGAP’s campaign. The TV ads complemented their campaign on the ground, he added.

Asserted Aguilera: “Sa tingin namin, makakatulong ang pag-alyado ng AGAP kay incumbent Governor (Santos-Recto) at Aquino. Naniniwala kami na makakatulong sila sa magsasaka (In our view, AGAP’s alliance with the incumbent governor and Aquino would greatly help us. We believe that they can help farmers).”

By comparison, AAPS’s party president and first nominee Dr. Edna Azurin sounded clueless when asked by PCIJ how her group booked its political ads. This is despite the fact that her signature was affixed in all of AAPS’s advertising contracts - PCIJ, August 2010

Lawyer Doris G. Ramirez, deputy director general for finance and legal affairs of the LP replied by SMS that read in part: “(Our) report to Comelec is the true representation of what the Liberal Party as political party spent. With regards to the ads of other party-lists, those were not donations to Liberal Party nor is LP in any manner involved in it.”

For Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile sent a letter to PCIJ by post, saying that “as Chairman Emeritus of the PMP, I am not involved in the administrative and financial affairs of the Party, my position being honorary in nature. I have, therefore, endorsed your letter to PMP’s treasurer, Mr. Jesse M. Ejercito, who can better give you the information that you need.”

Ejercito has yet to respond to PCIJ’s queries. PMP’s office could not also be reached because its listed number is “not yet assigned.”

In the meantime, a written query to Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) regarding the discrepancy between its ad expenditure based on the network contracts and what it declared in its SECE yielded two letters of apology — one addressed to PDP-Laban president Aquilino ‘Koko’ Pimentel III, and the other, to Comelec. The letters were signed by Mando Cosio, media director of Media Force Vizeum, the accredited media buyer for PDP-Laban and Jejomar Binay.

The letters state:

“We deeply apologize to the PDP-Laban and the Commission on Elections for the error committed by our agency with respect to the broadcast orders and placement of end tags for the television advertisements during the campaign period.”

“Because of an oversight, some broadcast orders and end tags were incorrectly credited to PDP-Laban.”

“However, we attest that the total airtime credited to Jejomar C. Binay are within the total airtime allowed by law for national candidates.”

Nothing in the letters explained why PDP-Laban did not declare any TV ad expenditure in its SECE. In fact, what they seemed to indicate was that there were still other TV ads credited to PDP Laban, which it did not declare in its SECE.

Quezon Representative and Lakas-Kampi-CMD treasurer Danilo E. Suarez, when asked about the absence of any political ad expenditure in Teodoro’s SECE, said he could not answer for the former defense secretary, who was still in the United States. But Suarez said that it was the party that raised funds and paid for Teodoro’s ads and his other election expenses, i.e., printing of election materials. Aside from Teodoro, Lakas also shouldered expenses of its senatorial candidates, he said.

Suarez , however, acknowledged that the money spent by the party for its presidential bet is considered as “donation” to Teodoro. – PCIJ, August 2010

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.

These reasons include:

• Porous campaign-finance laws and inconsistent interpretation of the specific provisions by the Commission on Elections (Comelec);
• The negligence and inability  of the Comelec to enforce these laws for reported lack of trained manpower, time and resources;
• An apparent pattern among most candidates, political parties, and their representatives to circumvent the laws in a “knowing and willful” manner;
• A patent conspiracy among candidates, political parties, party-list groups, and donors to defy the laws; and
• Uneven compliance by media agencies and service contractors with their reporting duties.

Overspending, misreporting, concealment of facts by the top candidates for president, vice president, and their political parties and associated party-list groups – these are among the findings of the PCIJ’s audit of the Statements of Electoral Contributions and Expenditures (SECEs) that the candidates and parties submitted to the Comelec, along with related documents.

Nacionalista Party presidential candidate Manuel B. Villar Jr. and the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) party of former president Joseph Estrada, for example, had clearly spent beyond lawful limits, if the Comelec were to enforce campaign finance rules strictly and audit advertising contracts they signed with media agencies. PMP had not filed its report on election expenses and donations as of Comelec’s extended deadline last June 25.

Four candidates for president (Villar, Estrada, Lakas-Kampi-CMD’s Gilberto Teodoro Jr., and President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III of the Liberal Party) and three candidates for vice president (Vice President Jejomar Binay of PMP/PDP Laban, LP’s Manuel Roxas II, and NP/Nationalist People’s Coalition’s Loren Legarda), as well as their political parties, failed to fully document and submit consistent reports about their receipt and acceptance of donations from various sources.

In addition, Aquino, Villar, Roxas, and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had separate deals with about a dozen party-list groups on tandem TV ads that essentially had their personal ads piggybacking on these groups’ allowed airtime. These ads, which aired in the last two weeks of the campaign, were not counted as part of the four candidates’ respective airtime limits.

To verify the data enrolled in the SECEs, PCIJ reviewed all available advertising contracts and telecast orders that the media agencies had submitted to the Comelec, Nielsen Media’s database on its monitoring of political ads, and other public records on the country’s top taxpayers and the corporate assets of the top campaign donors.

PCIJ also interviewed the treasurers and official representatives of the candidates and the parties, as well as some donors and fund raisers from the business community.

PCIJ’s audit, however, was hindered by the incomplete data supplied by candidates and political parties in their SECEs, as well as the absence of any or most of the required documents by many media outfits, especially those from print.

In part, that may be because no one has ever been prosecuted by the Comelec for non-submission of the required documents or for filing SECEs or other papers that are incomplete.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez also admitted to PCIJ that the SECE itself is “not a sharp instrument,” although the commission assumes that the candidates exert “all efforts to be as transparent in the statement as possible.”

Then again, it’s not as if Comelec has the means to verify the data on most of the documents it receives. Asked if Comelec had an auditing system, the body’s Legal Department head Ferdinand Rafanan said, “You know, I’m not even prepared to answer that because there simply is none. There is no auditing system.”

He also said that they have no time to go over the documents submitted by candidates, political parties, media outfits, and other entities. His own department, he pointed out, has only 30 people. “How can these…30 people examine tens of thousands…submitted to us?” asked Rafanan. “We do not simply have the time.”

“(We) have no capability to do that by training,” he added. “And we have never done it.”

Last month, the PCIJ presented the results of its own audit attempts to the Comelec en banc, partly in response to the poll body’s request for the PCIJ and the Pera’t Pulitika 2010 Consortium to help monitor the election spending reports of the candidates and the political parties. Some of the highlights of the PCIJ presentation include:

For the Aquino-Roxas slate, the Liberal Party, and the five party-list groups allied with them

In their separate SECEs, Aquino and Roxas said they spent P403.12 million and P279.35 million in campaign expenses, respectively. Both figures are within lawful limits.

Documents filed by both candidates with Comelec, however, did not reflect the barrage of ads that featured them but were supposedly purchased by their allied party-list groups Akbayan! Citizen’s Action Party (Akbayan), Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Kaakbay) and Parents Enabling Parents (PEP). Aquino was also featured in ads placed by Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines (AGAP) and An Waray.

The PCIJ found no evidence that Aquino or Roxas accepted or authorized these groups to buy ads to help promote their candidacies. Yet if it weren’t for the end tags that flashed the names of the party-list groups for a mere second, viewers would have no way of identifying the ads with the party-list groups that are listed as “advertisers,” since the focus was on the LP bets.

Interestingly, these party-list groups emerged as ad buyers in the country’s top leading networks only beginning in late April. And in just eight days, Aquino and Roxas were endorsed in 1,193 and 869 ads, respectively, of these five groups, based on Nielsen data.

If the cost of these ads were counted as his own expenditures, Aquino would have gone beyond his P507-million authorized expenditure limit for national candidates. But with no deed of donation of ads or even letters of acceptance of the donations filed with the Comelec by the groups and Aquino, the ad expenses were not declared nor counted in his name.

In his 267-page SECE, Aquino listed expenses on “political advertisements” in 16 companies worth P370.96 million, or 92 percent of his declared total campaign spending.

The ad booking orders for Aquino, issued by his ad agency and valued at P169.50 million, were signed by relatives Jaime C. Lopa and Maria V. Montelibano, who were both authorized by Aquino to incur expenses on his behalf. The Liberal Party also signed contracts with ABS-CBN Corp. worth P69.74 million for Aquino’s ads.

A letter issued by LP chairman Roxas on March 8, 2010, authorized Aquino to avail himself of half the party’s allowable air time – 60 minutes of TV airtime and 90 minutes of radio airtime per station. The letter further states that “this authority shall include the right to incur expenses chargeable to, and in the name of, the Liberal Party up to the amount of One Hundred Twenty-Five Million Pesos (Php125,000,000.00).”

Meanwhile, in his 38-page SECE, Roxas reported spending P232.06 million on “media,” which represents 83 percent of his total campaign expenses.

Ad contracts between Roxas and ABS-CBN Corp., and media purchase orders issued by Roxas’s ad agency to GMA Network, Inc. and TV5, come up to P195.44 million in total, or much less than what he declared in his expenditure report.

Yet in addition, LP bought P21.24 million worth of ads for Roxas, according to advertising contracts with ABS-CBN Corp. (P20.64 million) and a media purchase order issued by Image Dimensions to TV5 on LP’s behalf (P592,704).

The PCIJ found no letter of acceptance from Roxas for the expenditures LP had incurred in his name.

For the Villar-Legarda slate, the Nacionalista Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition, and party-list groups allied with them

The ad contracts signed by Senator Villar’s brother and authorized representative, Virgilio Villar, with the TV networks show that the presidential candidate’s ad buys amount to much less – P152.2 million – than what Villar himself declared to the Comelec for the duration of the official campaign period. Villar’s SECE says he spent P285.4 million in “campaign ads.” The discrepancy may be due to the “missing” contracts or those that a number of big radio networks and newspapers failed to submit to Comelec.

Yet in addition to his personal ad buys, Villar’s Nacionalista Party bought P150.4 million worth of ads on ABS-CBN, TV 5, Solar, and GMA 7. These contracts were signed by either NP executive vice president Jerry Navarrete – a long-time senior officer in Villar-owned companies – or NP treasurer Juan Pablo Bondoc.  These ad contracts listed either “Manny Villar” or the “Nacionalista Party” as “candidate” but were all paid by NP.

Meanwhile, the telecast orders that NP’s media agency Starcom Philippines issued to GMA 7 and its blocktimer TAPE Inc. listed the Nacionalista Party as both the “client” and the “brand.”

However they are booked or credited, though, all NP ads should have been billed to the account of Villar himself, documents from the Villar camp show.  These papers include the deed of donation of all the NP’s allowable advertising credits to Villar and the acceptance of the donation by Villar and his brother Virgilio.

Attached to the advertising contracts that the Villar camp signed with the networks were:

• A letter signed by Navarrete stating that NP “is availing (itself) of its allowable airtime under RA 9006 to promote the candidacy of Manuel B. Villar, Jr as follows: 1) Television ad placements for the candidate: 120 minutes; 2) Radio placements for the candidate: 180 minutes.”
• A letter signed by Virgilio Villar, “duly authorized representative of Manuel B. Villar, Jr.,” accepting the “donation of political ad placements in radio and television from Nacionalista Party.” (No amount, however, is indicated in the letter.)
• A Special Power of Attorney signed by Manuel B. Villar, Jr. appointing Virgilio B. Villar as his “true and lawful attorney-in-fact” allowing the latter to “sign, execute and deliver all contracts, agreements and/or documents related to all political advertisements and placements in television, radio, and print for the entire duration of the 2010 Election Period, within the limits allowed by law.”

A review of the TV commercials involved reveals as well that not only is Villar featured in the ads “paid by” the Nacionalista Party ‘”for Manny Villar,” but also in ads “paid for Nacionalista Party.” This means NP’s declared campaign ad expenditure of P152.8 million should have appeared in Villar’s statement to the Comelec as “contribution received” and “expenditure incurred.”

Villar’s statement however, does not indicate any contribution at all from any entity. Comelec lawyers say that such an omission in the SECE, if proven, could be a case of falsification or perjury.

Moreover, the amount would raise Villar’s actual expenditures to P584 million – or P77 million more than the P507 million a presidential candidate was allowed to spend (P10 per voter for an estimated 50.7 million registered voters in the May 2010 elections).

But then six party-list groups had also bought TV ad spots that invariably featured the candidacy, image, and message of Villar: Association of Administrators, Professionals and Seniors (AAPS); Alyansa ng mga Grupong Haligi ng Agham at Teknolohiya Para sa Mamamayan (AGHAM); Alay Buhay Community Foundation (Alay Buhay); Buhay Hayaan Yumabong (Buhay); Butil Farmers Party (Butil); and Pwersa ng Bayaning Atleta (PBA).

These party-list groups entered into contracts with ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, GMA Network Inc., Solar Entertainment Corporation, and TAPE Inc. for the airing of political ads that altogether were worth P417.6 million.

The media agencies that placed Villar’s ads — Starcom Philippines and PHD Media Network 2006, Inc. – also happen to be the same ones that handled the ad placement of all six party-list groups.

In addition, Starcom Philippines issued a number of telecast orders to GMA Network and Tape Inc. that listed “Friends of 2010” as the “client” that paid for P10.5-million worth of ads for Villar, as well as P14.8 million for the Nacionalista Party.

If the P14.8 million were added to NP’s advertising contracts worth P150.4 million, NP’s campaign ad spending would amount to P165.2 million. In its SECE, the NP declared total spending of only P152.8 million for “campaign ads,” or an understatement of about P12.4 million.

Compared to the Villar camp’s rather complex booking of ad expenses, that of the senator/real-estate tycoon’s running mate was straightforward.  Not only were all of Legarda’s unique ads booked by her political party Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), Legarda and the NPC also correctly reflected these in their respective SECEs.

The NPC, through its president, Frisco San Juan, entered into contracts with ABS-CBN 2 and Solar Entertainment for several ads featuring Legarda. NPC’s ad agency OMD Philippines likewise issued media purchase orders to GMA 7 naming the NPC as the “advertiser” and either its vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda or NPC as the “product.”

A letter signed by San Juan saying that the NPC is “availing (itself) of its allowable airtime … to promote the candidacy of Loren Legarda,” is also attached to a number of these contracts.

In its SECE, the NPC reported expenditures of P173.9 related to “Advertising/Media.” Under this category is listed the amount of P162.5 million paid to Antonio B. Legarda, Sen. Legarda’s authorized representative.

The amount of P162.5 million also appears in Legarda’s SECE under contributions received, with “NPC (Frisco San Juan)” listed as the contributor. Legarda’s summary of expenditures, however, showed a higher amount of P175 million spent for “Advertising/Media.”

If the P254.5-million cumulative worth of all the ad contracts signed by the NPC on Legarda’s behalf were to be considered though, it would appear that NPC overshot its spending limit and did considerable underreporting in its SECE.

For the Estrada-Binay slate, and the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino and Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan

As of press time, the PMP had not submitted its SECE to Comelec. This puts its winning candidates, Senator Enrile and Estrada’s son, Senator Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Ejercito Estrada, in clear peril of Comelec Resolution No. 8944, which states, “No person elected to any public office shall enter upon the duties of his office until he has filed the statement of contributions and expenditures.”

The same prohibition applies if the political party which nominated the winning candidates fails to file the required statement.

Estrada himself, however, submitted his SECE, in which he says he spent P112.50 million on “radio and TV advertisements.” Advertising contracts submitted by various broadcast networks meanwhile show that the PMP had ad buys worth at least a total of P261.18 million. This figure is already about P7 million over the allowed expenditure for political parties.

Not all of the ads paid for by PMP were for the party, however. About 75 percent (P193.71 million) of the P261.18 million went to ad spots for Estrada, or P81.21 million more than what Estrada declared as having spent for radio and TV ads in his SECE.

Documents show, though, that only P107.07 million worth of PMP ad contracts carried the line “Donation Accepted By: Joseph Ejercito Estrada (Donee)” or “Donation Accepted By: Jesse M. Ejercito (Donee) – Finance, Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino,” affixed with the donees’ respective signatures. (Ejercito is Estrada’s brother.)

In other words, only these ads would appear to have been accepted by Estrada and were authorized party expenditures for him. Media purchase orders issued by PMP’s agency MediaVest Philippines to the other networks do not have any similar note or attachment to indicate Estrada’s acceptance of the ads bought for him by PMP.

Estrada’s running mate Binay also had ads placed by his own party, PDP-Laban. According to ad contracts entered with ABS-CBN Corp. and telecast orders issued to GMA Network, Inc., the party bought ads for Binay worth P35.31 million and P26.72 million, respectively.

Binay, however, seems to have accepted only P24.99-million worth of ads PDP-Laban placed  for him in ABS-CBN Corp. based on  two contracts with the network that bear the line “Donation Accepted By: Jejomar ‘Jojo’ C. Binay (Donee)” affixed with Binay’s signature. Had he accepted the rest, the combined value of his ads in just ABS-CBN and GMA Network would reach P205.75 million, which would already be P4 million more than what he declared in his SECE as his total ad expenditure.

Indeed, the present vice president and his party also seem to have done some juggling of ad airtime and expenditure credit especially at the campaign homestretch, as a series of memos pertaining to a contract that PDP-Laban (through Media Force Vizeum) had signed with ABS-CBN illustrates.

The contract covered 68 30-second ad spots, worth a total of P20.6 million, that were to run from April 8 to May 8 on ABS-CBN. While the document identified PDP-Laban as “advertiser,” no name was indicated as PDP-Laban’s representative. Instead, the same signature appeared for PDP-Laban and its ad agency, Media Force Vizeum. Below the signatory line was the phrase “Donation accepted by: Jejomar ‘Jojo’ Binay (Donee),” which was signed by Binay.

But on April 29, ABS-CBN Corp. account executive Asela Tagarao sent a memo to Comelec, saying the old contract would be “superseded” by a new contract naming Binay as the “advertiser” instead of PDP-Laban. The contract amount and coverage remained the same.

On May 5, however, Tagarao issued another memo to Comelec, this time asking the commission to “disregard the contract … with advertiser detail: Jejomar ‘Jojo’ Binay” and “revert” to the “old contract with advertiser detail: PDP-Laban.”

The value of PDP-Laban’s ad contracts with ABS-CBN Corp. and telecast orders with GMA Network, Inc. alone amounted to P98.84 million. But in its election expense report to Comelec, the party listed a very modest P4.99 million as its total campaign expenditure.

PDP-Laban’s expenditure report was likewise lacking in detail, as it listed only P457,030 for political ad expenses, all of them in print media.  The party also failed to account for the donors of the multimillion-peso TV ad spots it purchased; it declared receiving contributions of only P5 million.

For Teodoro and Lakas-KAMPI-CMD

The former ruling coalition Lakas-Kampi-CMD says in its SECE that it received contributions totaling P130.68 million while it spent about 81 percent or P105.68 million of its total expenditures for “newspaper, radio, television and other public advertisements.”

Contracts and telecast orders from networks show that the party’s ad expenditures in these reached at least P86.02 million. Of this amount, P60 million worth of ads were aired in ABS-CBN, although it is not specified for whom these were bought. But those placed in GMA Network, worth P25.48 million, were for its standard bearer Teodoro, while P530,000 worth of ads in People’s Television Network, Inc. were for senatorial candidate Silvestre Bello III.

Only a contract entered with ABS-CBN Corp. by Lakas, dated April 13, 2010, carries the line “Donation Accepted By:” along with the signature of the donee. The donee’s signature is very similar to Teodoro’s signature that appears in his old statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN) filed before the House of Representatives.

If this contract is indeed signed by Teodoro, the ad cost of P1.70 million as indicated in the document should have been reported in his SECE, but it was not.

In his SECE, the former national defense secretary said his total campaign expenditures came to only P3.46 million, which was spent on concert, food, accommodation, transportation, and miscellaneous items. No ad expenditure was listed.

The SECE also lists Teodoro’s contributions received as P64,688.88 only. – With additional research and reporting by JC Cordon and Annie Ruth Sabangan, PCIJ, August 2010

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.’”

Aiming for the presidency costs a lot, so it is rather odd for candidates and their donors to avoid talking more frankly about funding, and whether it is ever enough for the endless needs of a nationwide campaign.

Any open discussion on money, however, seems to be taboo in Philippine political culture. Former banker Antonio Gatmaitan, recalling an episode from the 1960s, says he witnessed a meeting where the donor did not mention or refer to the money at all. After engaging in casual talk with the candidate, he recounts, the donor stood up and headed for the door, leaving behind an attaché case full of cash.

If large donors are shy talking about money with candidates, many if not most are even more hesitant to publicly acknowledge their donations to candidates’ election campaigns. Not surprisingly, business leaders find the official list of campaign donors submitted by the presidential candidates and political parties to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to be “incomplete.”

Based on what they have seen, they say the records do not include the names of fellow businessmen known to be big sources of campaign donations. They also suspect that some of the donors listed were just “fronts” for other, wealthier people who did not want their names in the list.

A scrutiny of the financial reports filed by the presidential candidates and political parties alone yields many reasons for skepticism that these present a full picture of how the May 10 presidential campaigns were funded.

Circle of 308

If the candidates and parties’ submissions are to be believed, just 308 people out of a total 50.7 million registered voters funded what is considered as the country’s costliest presidential campaign yet. The number is smaller still – 48 – if only the donors who gave P10 million and above are counted.

Yet, these four dozen donors account for almost 80 percent of total funds of P1.58 billion raised for the campaign, including the candidates’ own money. (In contrast, US president Barack Obama had 690,199 individual donors in 2008, according to the US Federal Election Commission)

The figures were added up from reports submitted by seven presidential candidates – then Senator Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III, former President Joseph Estrada, Senator Manuel B. Villar Jr., former defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., environmentalist Nicanor Perlas, former Senator Richard Gordon, and former Senator Maria Ana Consuelo ‘Jamby’ Madrigal – and the three major political parties – Liberal Party, Nacionalista Party, and Lakas-CMD/Kampi Party.

Villar and Madrigal claimed they had no donors, and used only personal funds for their campaigns.

The other candidates and parties did not submit their reports even after Comelec had extended the deadline to last June 25. As of this writing, the Comelec had issued notices to Bangon Pilipinas Movement standard bearer Brother Eddie Villanueva and Ang Kapatiran Party’s John Carlos de los Reyes, asking them to explain their failure to submit their election expenses reports.

Grossly understated

While it is generally presumed that big-time political donations are mainly the realm of wealthy people, the extremely low number of campaign donors suggests that the record of donations submitted to the Comelec may be grossly understated.

“We easily get more than 300 donors for our fund-raisings for books and computer donations to public schools,” says Ayala Foundation executive vice president and National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) stalwart Bill Luz, who like many in the business community harbors doubts that candidates and political parties submitted complete donors’ lists to the Comelec. “In the case of Typhoon Ondoy and Pepeng and other calamities, we (had) thousands of donors.”

Wealthy Filipinos certainly outnumber the pithy list of the 308 combined campaign donors of the seven presidential candidates and three political parties.

According to the National Statistical Coordination Board, there were 19,738 households that earned at least P2 million in 2006, the minimum annual income for a family to be counted “rich.” Adjusted for inflation, the cut-off point is P2.4 million in 2010.

Neither does the composition of the donors’ lists square with the popular registers of the wealthiest such as Forbes magazine’s list of 40 richest Filipinos or the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR)’s table of top individual income taxpayers.

Only two of the Forbes’s “40 richest Filipinos” in 2010 – Andrew Tan and Enrique Razon Jr. – are among the campaign donors.

Only three of the country’s 500 top taxpayers in 2008 – showbiz celebrity and presidential sister Kris Aquino-Yap, Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. chairman Manuel Pangilinan, and Jose Ma. Lopez of the Negros Occidental-based Lopez family, which owns one of the island’s leading sugar mills — are listed as having donated to presidential candidates.

Narrow base

In fact, if the donors’ lists are to be believed, the bulk of campaign donations come from a very narrow base composed mainly of the candidate himself, his family and friends, and a handful of business supporters.

Though Aquino had 96 donors who gave a total of P440 million for his campaign, about 40 percent of the amount came from just five of the biggest contributors, including an uncle who accounted for almost a quarter of the donations.

Estrada, who landed far second to Aquino in the presidential race, had 24 contributors who donated P227.5 million. But only five of these accounted for 35 percent of the total amount.

The third placer, Villar, claims to have singlehandedly funded his campaign with P431.6 million of his own money, making him the single-biggest source of campaign money in the recently concluded polls.

Madrigal also spent P55.2 million of her own money for her campaign.

Gordon, for his part, got 30 percent of his P59.3 million contributions from just seven donors, while the other candidates reported negligible donations.

The other candidates reported negligible donations.

Parties, too

The same pattern holds for the main political parties. About 50 percent of the P157.9 million contributed to the Liberal Party came from only 10 donors while the Nacionalista Party raised all of its funds of P80 million from just six people. The Lakas-CMD/Kampi party got P110 million from just two people, one of whom gave P100 million. It reported expenses of P130.7 million, adding that the extra P20.7 million was “contribution from political party,” implying internal funds.

For sure, any perceived lack of credibility of the candidates and political parties’ election donation reports makes a mockery of the country’s election laws and undermines faith in the Comelec, which lacks resources and capacity to enforce the provisions of the law on politicians and their wealthy donors.

And so long as candidates do not report fully and candidly how they are raising campaign money, the suspicion will linger that they are beholden to wealthy (and secret) donors, reinforcing suspicion and cynicism about politicians.

A small group of donors, for instance, could be seen as having the potential to gain undue influence if their candidates win because their pool of contributions accounts for a big chunk of the candidates’ campaign funds.

Why donate?

According to fund-raisers and business leaders interviewed by the PCIJ, many donors contribute money in the hope of getting introduced to the candidate and gaining possible access later. Some are happy with just having a photo with the candidate, says a Chinese-Filipino property developer. “You won’t believe how important these photos are when the police or the BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) come knocking on your door,” he says.

“A big contribution helps build access to the official though that is no assurance that your request will be acted upon favorably,” another business leader says. “Maybe, you’ll be invited to be part of the president’s visits to other countries, but that’s all.”

In part, though, the problem with coming up with a complete campaign donors’ lists could be traced to the candidates and the political parties’ failure to exercise enough diligence to properly record the donations.

Fund-raisers and campaign insiders admit that the documentation of major donations are often done close to the deadline for filing of election expenses, which is a month after voting day. Some, including a longtime fund raiser for three presidential candidates, act under the mistaken assumption that donors have the option whether or not to report the donation to the Comelec.

Section 99 of the Omnibus Election Code is very clear: “Every person giving contribution to any candidate, treasurer of the party, or authorized representative of such candidate or treasurer shall, not later than thirty days after the day of the election, file with the Commission a report under oath stating the amount of each contribution, agent of the candidate or political party receiving the contribution, and the date of the contribution.”

According to election lawyer Luie Tito F. Guia, however, the impression that reporting is optional persists because no donor, candidate, or party treasurer has ever been investigated or prosecuted for not following this provision of law.

Secret, unlisted donors

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a businessman admits to making a donation to a presidential candidate but not seeing his name on that candidate’s donors’ list. “I was asked if I was willing to submit an affidavit,” says the businessman. “I said okay, but I was out of the country at that time and it was close to the deadline for filing. I don’t know how they reported my donation.”

A fund-raiser for one of the candidates also says that he did not see the name of a prominent business family who had promised to give a donation even though he was sure the family made good on its promise.

In another case that could throw doubts on the veracity of the amounts being reported, a local government supplier was shocked to discover that her donation of P50,000 was misreported to be a few hundreds of pesos.

The best global practice in managing campaign contributions is for candidates or political parties to designate a single treasurer or agent to record and report all receipts and expenditures. But candidates in the Philippines tend to have multiple fund-raisers operating more or less independently of each other. Admits a presidential-campaign fund-raiser: “I wasn’t aware of all the money coming in.”

Bags full of cash

Donations also come mostly in the form of cash, contrary to the international best practice of conducting all transactions through one banking account, especially in countries where banking is pervasive. “People come here to my office with bags full of cash that they leave here,” says a fund-raiser, pointing to a corner of his office.

But the bigger reason why the donor lists are incomplete is that wealthy, big-time contributors are loathe to publicly disclose their role in funding candidates’ campaigns. One explanation for this is that many simply want to avoid the glare of public attention that accompanies a big contribution, which could bring in more requests for donations not only from politicians, but also from charities and other parties.

Fear of harassment by winning rival candidates is another reason why businessmen, especially those whose enterprises are heavily regulated or taxed by the state, refuse to publicly acknowledge their campaign donations.

Lucio Tan, the tobacco magnate and the country’s second richest man, is seen by some members of the Chinese-Filipino business community as the perfect example of somebody who got into trouble for backing a losing candidate.

In the 1992 polls, Tan came out rather strongly and publicly in his support for Ramon Mitra, the frontrunner in pre-election surveys but who eventually lost to the former defense secretary Fidel V. Ramos. A year into the Ramos term, the government amended tax laws to cover loopholes that supposedly benefited Tan’s cigarette and liquor companies, and the BIR filed a P25-billion tax evasion court suit against Tan.

Ramos-era officials continue to assert that Tan deserved to be prosecuted; in the Philippines, however, that may be a necessary and yet insufficient condition for actually going ahead with a case.

At any rate, Tan’s fortunes turned for the better under the next administration of President Joseph Estrada, whose candidacy in 1998 also benefited from the tobacco magnate’s support. As Estrada himself admitted recently, the tobacco magnate had gained such influence that he heeded Tan’s suggestion on who to appoint as the next chief justice of the Supreme Court, which later upheld the dismissal of the tax case against Tan and his tobacco companies.

Political bribery?

Political donors also suffer from negative perception from the public and their peers. Contributions, especially big amounts in the tens or hundreds of millions of pesos, are often seen as attempts to buy future government favors or posts.

“Donations are seen in the same light as bribery” says a prominent business leader, who laments how recent media reports seem to have focused more on a Cabinet appointee’s donation to Aquino rather than on his qualifications. The trouble is that these perceptions have been proven right a number of times that they taint well-meaning donors who are giving money out of conviction rather than expectation of future gain.

Lawyer Guia meanwhile says that this donors’ reluctance to disclose contributions is matched by the candidates’ tendency to understate campaign expenditures as well as donations because of unrealistically low level of election spending caps that were set more than a decade ago.

Though there are no limits on donations, the candidate is not likely to report all the donations if these are way above the legal spending caps. Neither will candidates disclose donations if made by ineligible parties such as foreigners or government suppliers, or if some of the funds were used in unethical or patently unlawful activities, such as intimidation or bribery of voters and election officials.

Experts say that more disclosures in campaign donations are the most effective way to address the public’s misgivings and concerns about the role of large donors in funding election campaigns.

Sunshine & caps

Magnus Öhman and Hani Zainulbhai, editors of the 2009 book Political Finance Regulation: The Global Experience, write, “While undue influence is difficult to detect and even harder to prevent, enhancing transparency can be a useful way of reducing the problems. Disclosure laws can minimize them by providing voters with information as to who contributes to political parties and election campaigns.”

Another way is to impose reasonable caps on individual and total donations to match limits on election spending, according to Namfrel’s Luz. He adds that the ceilings on election spending should be updated to more realistic levels to encourage more compliance with the law.

Luz says that ceilings on donations will “democratize campaign finance” by compelling candidates to seek contributions from more people rather than just a handful.

“With donation caps, perhaps more businessmen will be willing to contribute because there is a limit to what can be asked from them,” he argues. “This will also encourage more disclosure and reporting because the amounts are no longer embarrassingly huge.”

Limits on donations may also help check the tendency of some politicians to pocket campaign funds and spend freely. Former congressman Juan Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s son, himself had pointed to excess campaign contributions to help explain a sudden increase in his personal wealth.

Comments Luz: “Having caps on spending but not on donations allow the politicians to walk away with so much money from donations.”

One positive sign, however, is the rising media and public attention on campaign finance. In the run-up to the recently concluded elections, voters frequently asked candidates: “How are you planning to recoup all that money you’re spending?” Allegations of overspending diminished the electorate’s support for some presidential candidates.

Still, there’s a long way to go in getting donors and candidates to set their records straight. Apart from new or better campaign finance rules, the institutional capacity of Comelec to enforce regulations needs beefing up.

At present, there are just a handful of staffers at the commission’s law department that handles campaign finance reports, leaving the election body virtually incapable to examine veracity of the documents submitted by the candidates and political parties.

“Nongovernment organizations are subject to stricter corporate governance regulation than political parties,” says Luz, noting that NGOs’ financial statements are audited by external accountants and could be examined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). – With research by Karol Anne Ilagan and JC Cordon, PCIJ, July 2010



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.

There is also the political equivalent of the venture capitalist: the wealthy individual who is unrelated to the candidate but who makes a big bet on his or her candidacy either because of genuine conviction or shrewd calculation. But the names of these donors and their contributions, which could run to hundreds of millions of pesos, do not usually appear in the official lists, according to campaign fund raisers.

In the last elections, the biggest source of campaign money was none other than Nacionalista Party standard bearer Senator Manuel B. Villar Jr., who reported that he coughed up P431 million of his considerable personal wealth and did not receive a single donation for his presidential bid. Another was former Senator Ma. Ana Consuelo ‘Jamby’ Madrigal, who reported spending P55.2 million of her own money for her presidential bid.

Newly sworn-in President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, meanwhile, raised P440 million, with mainly family members and friends as his top donors. They include Antonio ‘Tonyboy’ Cojuangco, an uncle and former head of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., who gave P100 million; and Kris Aquino-Yap, his famous kid sister, who gave P15 million.

Aquino’s other big donors include Chiong Bu Hong, said to be Mizamis City’s biggest hardware owner, Martin Lorenzo of Pancake House and brother of Luis Lorenzo (former agriculture secretary who had been implicated in the “fertilizer funds scam”), and Fulgencio Factoran Jr., the environment secretary of President Noynoy Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon C. Aquino.

Of former President Estrada’s P227.5 million in total donations, P20 million came from members of the Ejercito family, the biggest contribution to his campaign to regain the presidency. They are joined by close personal friends such as Jaimy Dy, Enrique Razon Jr., Antonio Evangelista, and Jorge Antonio. Current PLDT .chairman Manuel Pangilinan also made a P10-million donation.

Teodoro, the administration party’s presidential candidate, reported the lowest amount of total donations of only P64,000, which was even much less than the P2.2 million raised by environmentalist and independent candidate Nicanor Perlas.

Donations for Teodoro were even less than a tenth of the $20,000 (P920,000) worth of food and drinks consumed by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her party in Le Cirque restaurant in New York last year.

According to documents submitted to the Comelec, Teodoro’s party, Lakas-CMD/Kampi, raised P110 million in donations. Of the amount, P100 million came from Emmanuel ‘Noel’ Oñate, one of former President Fidel Ramos’s fund-raisers and operators who struck it big when he sold a budget airline he founded in 1995 for P1.4 billion in 2003.

Similarly, the Liberal Party raised a fourth of its P157-million total donations from its party chief and vice presidential candidate, Manuel Roxas II. Other top donors of the LP include Aquino’s uncle Ramon Cojuangco Jr. and again, Aquino’s kid sister Kris Aquino-Yap.

The Nacionalista Party raised P80 million from just six generous donors:  Charlie Gorayeb, Rolando Evangelista, Ibrahim Nuño, Luis Pastor, Vincent Miranda, and Teresita Medina.

Gorayeb is former national president of the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Association or CREBA, and chairman of the board of four entities, namely, the construction firm Goram Development Corporation, Dolores Industrial Park Corporation, (a special ecozone owner/developer in Malvar, Batangas) Alta-Agri Corporation (engaged in agricultural production); and Red Sea Construction & Realty Corporation (engaged in mining and quarrying of aggregates). He is also the honorary consul-general of the Republic of Djibouti.

Nuño is president of the Metro Stonerich Corporation that supplies construction materials.

Like business start-ups that prove themselves viable, election campaigns also begin to get money from an increasingly wider circle of funders if the candidate does well in the pre-election surveys.

“Surveys are a very important consideration for donors in deciding where to put their money,” said a campaign fund raiser. “Donors may give you a small amount at the beginning but the big money comes in only if you do well in the surveys.”

Many donors also hedge. Some play it safe by donating to several candidates vying for the same position. Few can afford not to give any donation at all.

Remarks one Filipino-Chinese business leader: “If you see your business competitor becoming unduly close to the likely winner, you tend to worry and begin to look for ways to get to know the candidate, too.”  - PCIJ, July 2010

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.

If the amount was collected and remitted by the media agencies, it is a huge windfall that “will add to the intake of the government,” according to Dennis Arroyo, director of the National Economic and Development Authority’s National Planning and Policy Staff (NEDA-NPPS).

However, only some advertising contracts submitted by some broadcast media agencies to the Commission on Elections imputed the EVAT on the amounts that the candidates and the political parties were asked to pay. Many more advertising contracts from other media agencies did not reflect any EVAT charges.

The PCIJ arrived at the P4.3-billion figure based on data from the media monitoring group Nielsen, and factoring in all the discounts and applicable increases in TV, radio and print ad rates.

NEDA: P15B spent

Of the P4.3 billion, the top five candidates for president spent P1.1 billion, the candidates for senator another P1.5 billion, four candidates for vice president P653 million, and party-list groups P597 million.

“Omnibus ads” of the political parties for multiple candidates amounted to P297 million, and “tandem ads” for candidates for president and vice president, another P131 million.

Aside from the P4.3 billion ad spending by national candidates, aspirants for local positions altogether spent P162 million on print and broadcast ads during the two months that they were allowed to campaign.

NEDA-NPPS, which counts the spending by the national government and all the candidates – local and national – in its computations, meanwhile, estimates that the total expenditures for the May 2010 elections could reach P15 billion.

National government election spending, says NEDA, includes Comelec’s budget for locally-funded projects under the 2010 General Appropriations Act (GAA), notably the FY (fiscal year) 2010 automated national and local elections and FY 2010 overseas absentee voting.

Some of the specific cost items cited by NEDA are salaries, compensation, and honoraria of personnel involved in election activities (e.g. per diem of teachers, allowance for COMELEC Board of Election Inspectors, allowance for embassy personnel for overseas absentee voting, etc), supplies and materials, and support for operations.

“Total election spending,” the NEDA says, “could contribute 0.39 percentage points to real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate this year.” By comparison, expenditures during the 2007 polls contributed 0.34 percentage points to the GDP that year.

Profit bonanza

For sure, though, much of the monies spent during the recently concluded polls went to political ads.

The multibillion-peso ad spending spree by national candidates already makes up a significant 29 percent of the NEDA”s estimate of total poll expenditures, and even the Liberal Party (LP) and the Nacionalista Party (NP) have readily admitted that ad spending ate up much of their respective campaign budgets.

And while big ad expenditures proved to be no guarantee for big political wins (or just plain wins, for that matter), these have apparently resulted in a major profit bonanza for certain broadcast companies, along with advertising and PR firms.

ABS-CBN Broadcasting Network and GMA Network, in particular, reported a substantial boost in their profits in the first quarter of 2010, in large part because of added revenues from political ads.

Both listed companies, in separate disclosure reports, the two networks acknowledged earnings of more than P1 billion each from political ads during this period.

Indeed, despite the steep cost of TV ads, 78 percent of the official campaign period ad buys of national candidates went to television, data from the media monitoring group Nielsen reveal.

Advertising and media agencies also benefited from the political ad frenzy.

Based on telecast orders submitted by GMA Network to the Commission on Elections (Comelec), these entities took as commission as much as 15 percent of the gross media purchase amount whenever they placed ads on behalf of candidates.

In general, too, ad agencies take a cut of around 17 percent of the production cost for each commercial they make.

Pre-campaign ads: P1B

Some candidates also placed ads way before February 9, 2010, the start of the three-month official campaign period for those running for national positions.

Earlier, the PCIJ reported that from November 2009 to January 2010 alone, the total indicative value of ads placed by presidential candidates had reached as much as P1.1 billion.

Yet spending big on ads seems to have backfired on some candidates, especially NP’s Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar Jr. and LP’s Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas II, who were the top ad spenders among the presidential and vice presidential candidates, respectively.

According to University of the Philippines political science professor Dr. Grace Jamon, political ads may have played a huge role in creating name recall among voters, but these same ads also called attention to excessive campaign spending.

This, in turn, made the public wary of the big ad spenders, she says.

Villar, for instance, landed third in the presidential race even though he had practically become a constant fixture on TV in the last year or so because of his ad blitz.

From November last year to January this year alone, Villar spent more than half a billion pesos on ‘advocacy’ ads, most of which ran on TV.

He appeared to pare down his ad buys during the official campaign period (February 9 to May 8), when campaign spending and airtime limits were already in effect. Officially, he spent P390.5 million during the period, including those ‘paid for’ and ‘paid by’ the Nacionalista Party.

Rode on party-list ads

Villar, though, also appeared in ads featuring him and his running mate Loren Legarda that were worth a total of P90.5 million, as well as in commercials with party-list groups and other candidates that were altogether worth P254 million.

During the critical last week of the campaign, Villar had only P22,000 worth of TV ads to his credit as well, even if in fact he appeared in 625 TV ad spots of six party-list groups (worth an indicative P134.6 million), and in 106 TV ad spots with some of his senatorial candidates, among them Gilbert Remulla, Gwendolyn Pimentel, and Miriam Defensor Santiago (worth an indicative P20.2 million).

Most of Villar’s ads with party-list groups even featured him solo, but the spending and the minutes would not be credited to him.

As noted by Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, these would be credited to the groups whose names appear in the ‘paid for’ and ‘paid by’ clauses in the ad’s end tags.

In fairness, this tactic was used by other candidates as well, among them president-elect Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III.

Erap’s late surge

This may be why it was former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada who emerged as the top spender on TV ads in the last week of the campaign.

From May 1 to 8, Estrada, who ran under the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino Party, posted an indicative ad value of P45 million from May 1 to 8 alone – or a daily average ad spending of P5.6 million.

Estrada splurged on ads in the last five weeks of the campaign, spending P100.7 million, or P20 million more than his combined ad spending (P80.6 million) in the first two months of the official campaign period.

Among other things, this strategically late ad-placement surge might have helped Estrada overtake Villar eventually and place second in the presidential race.

In terms of ad spending during the campaign period, Estrada was third, coming after Villar and Aquino. In all, the three’s combined ad expenditures (including commercials ‘paid for’ and ‘paid by’ their respective political parties) from February 9 to May 8 reached P905.8 million.

Noy-Mar ads

President-elect Aquino, for his part, was credited with P334 million worth of unique ads (including those ‘paid for’ and ‘paid by’ the Liberal Party) even though, like Villar, he was also featured in 559 TV ad spots of six party-list groups the week before the polls.

These ads were worth an indicative P103 million altogether. In addition, Aquino had his own TV ads that appeared 261 times (worth P34.7 million), and 292 TV ads in tandem with running mate Roxas (worth P39 million) in the last week of the campaign.

Roxas himself was consistently the top ad spender among the vice presidential candidates even during the pre-campaign period. And from just April 1 to May 8, Roxas spent an indicative P86 million on TV ads, or an average of P2.3 million a day during the 37-day period.

All that expense seemed worth it, however, with Roxas also consistently ranking No. 1 in voter-preference surveys. That is, until the homestretch of the campaign when Pwersa ng Masa’s Jejomar ‘Jojo’ Binay surprised everyone with his sudden surge in survey ratings.

As of this writing, Roxas is still trailing behind Binay by over 800,000 votes, based on partial unofficial tally by GMANews.TV of 90.26 percent of election returns.

Binay, who was a constant third placer in surveys since December 2009, overtook survey second-placer Loren Legarda (Villar’s running mate) in April. By May, he was in a statistical tie with Roxas for the top spot in a voter-preference survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations.

Analysts attribute Binay’s surprise showing in large part to the public endorsement by Senator Francis Escudero a few weeks before the polls – an endorsement driven home by a prominent TV ad campaign.

Political strategist Ronald Jabal says that Escudero’s endorsement ads for Binay as Aquino’s vice president presented the Makati mayor as a viable alternative to Roxas, who is liked and trusted enough by the public, but is perceived as being too like Aquino – a scion of a rich and politically influential family.

By contrast, Binay has an impoverished past, which he brings up every so often in his ads.

Jabal says that it was Escudero’s ads that “made people realize that a ‘combination’ of candidates coming from different political parties is possible.” It may have also reminded them that Binay was a “Cory boy,” having had close ties with Aquino’s late mother, former President Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino.

‘Seal-deal’ ads?

But perhaps just to “seal the deal,” the savvy Binay spent P37.7 million on TV ads during the campaign’s last week as well, or P14 million more than the combined TV ad spending of Roxas and Legarda for the same period. Nielsen data indicate that the amount made up 62 percent of Binay’s total budget for TV ads.

Up until then, the LP had run the campaign of frontrunners Aquino and Roxas as individual candidates rather than as a team, observes Jabal. At the start of the campaign, Roxas was even the one endorsing Aquino, says the strategist.

Yet with Escudero presenting Binay as Aquino’s possible partner, Roxas was soon slipping in the polls. In reaction, the LP began saturating the airwaves with Aquino-Roxas ads – this time with Aquino endorsing Roxas.

This last-ditch attempt to save Roxas in the last week of the campaign came with a hefty price tag: an indicative P121 million for a total of 723 TV ad spots, or a staggering P15 million per day on average from May 1 to 8.

These tandem ads include those ‘paid for’ and ‘paid by’ the LP, as well as those credited to party-list groups. Aside from these commercials, Roxas also had 87 TV ad spots that feature him solo (worth P9.7 million) in the last week of the campaign, as well as 59 TV ad spots (worth P14.3 million) with party list groups Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan/All Filipino Democratic Movement (Kaakbay) and Parents Enabling Parents (PEP).

Such efforts, however, may have been a little too late for Roxas. Still, the recent polls did result in his party’s standard bearer now heading for Malacañang.

NEDA’s Arroyo also points out: “Every new elections infuse new political energy for the incoming administration, which is helpful for investments.”

Noting the wide margin of votes for President-elect Aquino, Arroyo remarks, “It is definitely safe to say that it is an advantage for investments.” PCIJ, May 2010

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

The fact that the wizened Senate president, 86, would try to appear perky in colegiala-speak, spoke volumes of what candidates were ready to do to cross the generation divide. And who can blame them?

Roughly half of the 50 million registered voters in the country are 18 to 33 years old, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec). This means that candidates as old as Enrile and former president Joseph Estrada, 73, must try to connect with a generation buzzing about Facebook (“Mafia Wars!”), Super Junior (“Sorry Sorry”), and Jejespeak (“hELloEH pOeZZ”).

The idea of a youth vote has always been a concept inviting and uncertain, interesting and nebulous at the same time. Its pivot is a premise not quite proved that there is such a voting bloc in the first place.

Is the youth vote like a women’s vote, where voters’ shared interests do not necessarily translate into shared candidates? Or is it more like the much-vaunted Iglesia ni Cristo vote, the closest the Philippines has to a command or bloc vote?

According to the results of mock polls conducted at three leading colleges – the University of the Philippines (UP), the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) – it appears like the youth in schools have common interests and ideals, but certainly no common candidates.

At least in the media, the story has largely been repeated: that of the supposed power of the youth to tilt the vote for or against certain candidates. These mock elections have been accorded front-page treatment, and the “winners” projected as idols of the young and the idealistic.

For a while, Senator Francis Joseph “Chiz” Escudero was touted as the presidential candidate who had successfully cornered the youth vote, until he backed out of the presidential race in November 2009.  The event somehow triggered a free-for-all fight among the candidates for the so-called youth vote.

Gordon tops in UP

In the string of campuses of the UP, long known as the hotbed of activism, Bagumbayan party standard-bearer Richard Gordon consistently scored much higher than he did in the voter-preference surveys of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia. Gordon topped the first round of Botong Isko 2010, an online mock poll conducted among UP students in March; 31.23 percent of the participants voted for him. Gordon continued to clinch the top spot in April and May, getting a stunning 54.76 and 57.98 percent of the votes, respectively.

In Botong Isko, SWS and Pulse Asia survey-frontrunners Benigno Aquino III of the Liberal Party and Manuel Villar Jr. of the Nacionalista Party tailed Gordon and administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro Jr. However, Villar topped the third round of another set of mock polls conducted in UP by the Alpha Sigma fraternity in March.

The first round of the Alpha Sigma mock polls was held in September 2009, with then presidential hopeful Escudero snagging the top spot. Come December, Escudero had dropped out of the race, allowing Teodoro to claim first place in the second round.

Reality vote

Yet in the latest partial unofficial tally of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) based on the election returns provided by the Comelec, Gordon only sputters to fifth place, with only 467,627  votes, compared to the 13.8 million votes of frontrunner Aquino. In other words, Gordon only got the approval of 0.9 percent of the total registered voters in the country.

For the UA&P’s mock surveys, Teodoro was hailed the winner, taking 44 percent of the total votes cast by the students last March. In contrast, the KBP’s latest unofficial tally of the actual May 10 elections showed Teodoro trailing poorly with 3.7 million votes.

In UST, erstwhile hopeful Escudero was the leading candidate in August last year with 24.2 percent of the vote. The university however had a new frontrunner in December -  Ateneo de Manila graduate Aquino, with 33.2 percent of the vote. Teodoro, Aquino’s second cousin, was not far behind with 32.5 percent. In the last UST mock polls held in February, Aquino and Teodoro scored a “statistical tie.”

Same, different

Curiously, students from all three universities cited the same reasons for choosing different candidates – intellectual competence, track record, political will, honesty and integrity.

UP journalism student Franz dela Fuente voted for Gordon in the mock polls because he believes in the “no non-sense” governance the former mayor of Olongapo City promises. Dela Fuente believes in Gordon’s brand of leadership, integrity, competence and experience.

Journalism fresh graduate Rupert Mangilit says Villar’s success in business proves his work ethic and capability, qualities that could lead the country to its “much-needed economic facelift.”

“A self-sustaining economy is what the country needs to achieve progress, and Villar’s experience in managing a multi-billion Filipino-owned powerhouse may help bring the country to take the first steps toward national industrialization,” says Mangilit.

On the other hand, Renze Santos, an Electronics and Communications Engineering student, says he was undecided during the mock polls, but as May 10 drew closer, he was already leaning toward Noynoy Aquino.

“I chose Noynoy because he has the best chance of winning over Villar. Apart from that, (I have no other reason),” says Santos, adding that Villar should not be president because of the C-5 double insertion scandal.

Identification

Mock polls in UP may deviate from the results in national surveys, but frontrunners Aquino and Villar still sit somewhere near the top. Estrada, who aced Villar in the polls toward the end of the campaign, is one of the bottom-dwellers here.

Environmentalist Nicanor Perlas, Sen.  Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal, Olongapo City Councilor John Carlos “JC” de los Reyes, and Eduardo “Eddie” Villanueva were the tail-enders.

UP Political Science Professor Perlita Frago-Marasigan says UP students could identify more with candidates who are UP alumni. Villar, Teodoro and Gordon are all UP alumni.

Frago-Marasigan says students may have frowned upon the slew of black propaganda from the Aquino and Villar camps. Gordon, on the other hand, seems to portray an “idealistic” image that many UP students could identify with. His image as chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross echoes volunteerism, the essence of the Oblation, UP’s symbol of selfless service for the country, she says.

This idealistic image also means a balance between boldness and civility. To be favored by the Iskolar ng Bayan, a politician must argue with reason, but avoid cynicism, adds Frago-Marasigan.

“The youth can identify with the most idealistic candidate. One who says that change is possible. One who does not say that this is what is really happening, we cannot do so much about it,” she says.

As for Teodoro, Frago-Marasigan says UP students identified with his image of intelligence, one-half of his slogan “Galing at Talino.” However, Teodoro’s ties with the Arroyo administration may have pulled him a few points short of Gordon.

“If you listen to Teodoro’s speeches basically he would be saying ‘Yeah that is true but we cannot do so much about it.’ So that can easily turn off the youth,” says Frago-Marasigan.

Colliding cousins

In UST, chemical engineering student Jennifer Suarez said she voted for Aquino because she “sees his sincerity.”

“I believe that Sen. Aquino is honest and open and he has what it takes to end or at least lessen the corruption in our country,” says Suarez.

Ivan Anyayahan, a third year Journalism student says that he voted for Teodoro because he is smart.

“He also had confidence on the things that he promised that made me think he is sincere,” says Anyayahan.

Political Science professor Edmund Tayao of the Faculty of Arts and Letters says many see Aquino as the “moral” choice because he is the son of democracy icons Benigno Aquino Jr. and Corazon Aquino.

Tayao points out that the popularity of cousins Aquino and Teodoro “reflects the youth’s idealism in that the choice reflects a consideration of both capacity and integrity.”

For the UA&P, Teodoro was hailed as the winner, taking 44 percent of the total votes. Out of the university’s voting population of 2,281, at least 1,076 cast their votes in electronic voting machines in six days.

A bar topnotcher with a Masters degree from Harvard Law School, Teodoro was perceived to be intelligent, capable and trustworthy.

While Teodoro had an overwhelming lead among student voters who composed the great majority, Aquino was preferred by most of the university’s faculty and staff, including janitors and security guards.

Flawed method

Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes says respondents in the pollster’s surveys base their choice largely on the image the candidates wanted to project. In contrast, he notes that university students choose candidates based on the notion of competence, whether real or claimed.

According to Frago-Marasigan, neither Botong Isko nor the Alpha Sigma polls may be considered to be representative of the “youth vote.”

First, UP is not representative of the youth vote. Second, Botong Isko is not even representative of the so-called “UP vote.” The turnout for the first round of Botong Isko was only about 12 percent in the Diliman campus and eight percent system-wide. The later rounds drew even fewer participants.

Any conclusion from such a small chunk of the student body would only be representative of those who participated in the mock polls, says Frago-Marasigan.

The first round of the Alpha Sigma polls employed the same method, although willing students cast their vote in booths set up by the fraternity. The third round of the Alpha Sigma polls was more representative, after the fraternity employed the stratified random sampling method to gather respondents. This last poll drew 8,468 students or 38 percent of UP Diliman’s 22,597 students.

Frago-Marasigan believes that to derive credible conclusion on UP’s voting preference, a poll must gather over half of the total population at least.

Holmes agrees. He estimates that there are about two million university students in the country, or less than a third of the seven million voters within the college age bracket of 18 to 24.

However, Holmes says it is not the size of the sample that mattered but the way the respondents were selected. In all scientific surveys, all members of the population should have an equal chance of being selected for the sample.

Some mock polls did not choose respondents by random sampling. In the Botong Isko, UST and UA&P polls, students voted voluntarily.

“It’s a self-selection process because people who would participate there are people who are inclined to express what their preferences are. So in that sense it cannot be deemed as representative of the school,” says Holmes.

No ‘youth vote’

The idea of a “youth vote” is something that Holmes holds in doubt. In fact, he notes that the Philippines cannot be considered to have an “electorate,” a part of the population that shares similar attributes and position on issues.

Like other age groups, the youth is not organized into one voting bloc.

“My sense is that it is not certain, and you do not have a large group of individuals who may be in school or out of school who (are) articulating such issues so that the candidates can respond to them,” says Holmes.

Arnil Paras, a political economy professor at UA&P, agrees with this analysis. Candidates seem to be targeting the youth as a voting bloc that could swing the elections to their favor, but the assumption “has no historical basis in the post-Marcos era,” he says.

“No presidential candidate has won thanks (solely) to the youth. Will the 2010 elections be the first?” asks Paras.

Useful process

While experts question the relevance of the results of the mock polls in schools, they agree that these mock polls still serve a greater purpose.

The value of the mock polls derives from the process rather than the results, they say. In asking students to cast their votes in mock polls, the student body is encouraged to discuss, debate, and scrutinize the candidates. As a result, students become more politically aware, engaged, and involved.

“It is really (about) getting the students more engaged in issues and in politics in general,” says Holmes.

“I think more than the results of the survey, the value is that the students, since they are new citizens, are able to really participate in the exercise,” says Frago-Marasigan.

While there is no evidence that all the respondents in the mock polls actually voted last May 10, the process served as a constant reminder to all students that being passive observers is no longer an option.

Civil engineering student Myria Cernechez, a Gordon supporter, affirms this.  “Some are hesitating to vote for a certain candidate because they’re afraid that their votes will be wasted but I don’t think that should be the case. I would rather support someone for his credentials and convince others to vote for him too.” – PCIJ, May 2010