CAMPAIGN FINANCE MONITORING

Comelec's hands tied on campaign finance rule, official admits

MARC JAYSON CAYABYAB, GMA News November 16, 2012

An official from Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday said the poll body has yet to enforce rules limiting the candidates’ spending during campaign period.
  “Sa kapal ng libro ng batas, ito ‘yung parte na nai-skip na lang,” said Christian Robert Lim, head of the Comelec’s campaign finance unit (CFU), at a forum at the Ateneo School of Government in Rockwell, Makati.
 
“The commission was just limited to receive statements of contributions and expenditures (SOCE). But that’s it. In term of enforcement, there’s really no enforcement,” he added.
 
SOCE refers to reports of expenses incurred for tarpaulins, television advertisements, music jingles, among others, by candidates. It also includes contributions of donors during the election season.

Expensive elections

Ateneo School of Government’s Joy Aceron said the poll body’s failure to monitor campaign finance has resulted in expensive elections in the country.

“We have regulations; there are laws that state the limits. But they are never monitored. These laws are never enforced. As a result, we have very expensive elections,” she said.

She also lamented the fact that only the affluent can afford to run in elections, noting that a candidate would need at least P6 billion to launch a nationwide campaign.

“All of us have the right to vote and to run for office, but you need billions of pesos to actually run for office. That’s the stark reality,” Aceron said.

Boring topic

Asked why the Comelec has not taken campaign finance rules seriously before, Lim said the commissioners – most of them former election lawyers – were usually more preoccupied with vote counting and electoral protests.

“If you look at it, karamihan ng mga commissioners, ano ‘yung mga tinutukan nila – ‘yung mga kaso, ‘yung mga protest, ‘yung actual na eleksyon. It’s not more on the finance part. Karamihan mga lawyers, hindi naman sila mahilig ‘dun. It’s a boring topic,” Lim said.

As a result, election campaign during the 2010 elections has spiraled out of control, he said.

“Walang nangyare. Napabayaan, napabayaan, until you can really look at 2010 medyo grabe na, wild na ang kampanya,” Lim said.

Ad hoc committee

In preparation for the 2013 elections, the poll body has created the CFU as an ad hoc committee in charge with crafting policy on campaign finance.

Comelec Resolution 9476 – promulgated last June – said the CFU is in charge with monitoring fund raising and spending activities, as well as analyzing and auditing SOCE reports.

The resolution also required president and vice president candidates to spend P10 for every registered voter, candidates with political parties to spend P3 each voter, and independent candidates with just P5 per voter.

Lim said the CFU currently has 10 persons, including an accountant and an auditor. The unit, he said, is only limited on crafting policy and is not yet prepared for monitoring.

“We’re borrowing people from different departments. Wala kaming plantilla with that sa campaign finance. So you can’t really have time to dedicate it on all of this (campaign finance),” Lim said.

“It’s too much. Hindi kaya. We only have two Comelec people in each municipality. Ilang positions are running there. So how can you monitor?” he added.

To expand the CFU into a department, Lim said they are looking into the Political Party Development bill, which seeks to create a department of campaign finance and political party.

Lim said clarifying the framework of campaign finance rules is the least they can do to ensure implementation.

“Ang importante sa amin, policy. Malinaw ang policy, malinaw ang rules. So madali siya i-trickle down to our local para maintindihan nila. Sa ngayon hindi nila maintindihan eh,” he said.

One of the rules the poll body plans to do is to tax campaign finance in coordination with the Bureau of Internal Revenue. “If you can trace it and tax it, it makes it more painful for the candidate,” Lim said.

The CFU head also said they are looking into requiring 120 minutes of airtime on a single network, as stated in the Fair Elections Act.

Lim said politicians went beyond the limit because the law says airtime depended on the station, which means they can have commercials on different regional branches throughout the country.

Premature campaigning
While the Comelec plans to strictly monitor campaign finance, it, however, has no power but to let candidates campaign even outside of the  prescribed campaign period, which is set 90 days before the elections.

This is because Republic Act 9369, or the Automation Law, says a politician officially becomes a candidate only at the start offter the campaign period, Lim said.

Thus, the Comelec has the mandate to monitor candidates only during the campaign period, allowing the candidates to campaign even before the prescribed period.

“If you look at the definition, we have no choice. We have to follow what is under RA 9369… That’s our problem: We’re stuck with the law,” Lim said.

He added that the legislators play a big role in allowing premature campaigning. “I think, rather unfortunately, the politicians are the ones making the laws so they are the ones that did away with premature campaigning.”

Commissioner Rene Sarmiento had earlier said Comelec no longer has a definition of premature campaigning due to two Supreme Court rulings.

According to the 2006 decision Lanot vs. Comelec, political promotion done outside the campaign period forms part of the aspirants’ “freedom of expression.” Also, the 2009 decision Peñera vs. Comelec, ruled that elective aspirants can promote themselves before the scheduled campaign period since they are not yet considered candidates at the time.

To resolve this, Lim proposed an amendment on the Automation Law - to make an aspirant a candidate upon filing a certificate of candidacy instead of after the campaign period.
— KBK, GMA News

Political Dynasty Stays

Political dynasties are here to stay

Written by NESTOR MATA 

Malaya Business News Online

‘Dynastic political families exist not only here in the Philippines but also in other democracies all over the world, in the United States, South America, Europe, Africa, and other Asian countries.’ 

WHY is there so much ado about political dynasties here in the Philippines today? Twenty-five years ago, after the framers of the 1987 Constitution included in it a provision prohibiting political dynasties, Congress since then never enacted a law defining the meaning of the term “political dynasty” and implementing the ordained ban on dynastic political families. A few senators and congressmen have tried but failed to do it. And now, with the 2013 mid-term national elections looming in the political horizon, it has become, as a former solon so fearfully described it, “an explosive issue.” 

Why, oh, why? They say that political dynasties present a threat to our democracy. But, if this is true, how come that in many other democratic countries all over the world where political dynasties also exist, we have not heard of voices wailing to high heavens against them? Neither have we read of any report of someone, in any of those countries, organizing an anti-political dynasty movement! 

Not in the United States, which planted the idea of democracy when it colonized the Philippines a century ago, where political dynasties are as old as the republic itself. John Quincy Adams, the country’s sixth president, for example, was the son of John, its second, and father of Charles, a congressman. And the same pattern has been repeated in every corner of government, within generations and from one to the next, as far as Alaska and down to California, Arizona, Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Rode Island, Florida, and many other states, where members of some 700 dynastic political families have served in the federal legislature since 1774. 

Similar stories about political dynasties have occurred elsewhere all over the world, including Italy, Greece, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Congo, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries, where dynastic politics takes the form of a male-to-female transfer, following the American pattern of widows stepping into their dead husband’s shoes, through either a coup or an assassination or both, often serves to hurry the succession along, as it happened in the mid-eighties here in the Philippines. 

Thus, in 1986, Corazón Aquino was propelled to the Philippine presidency, three years after the assassination of her husband, Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino. And in 2010, their son, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino was catapulted to the presidency in the wake of his mother Cory’s death. And, in the coming 2013 mid-term elections, a cousin of President Aquino is running as a senatorial candidate. There are other familiar names belonging to political families, other than the Aquino and Cojuangco clans, like Binay, Estrada, Revilla, Enrile, Cayetano, Angara, Villar-Aguilar, Marcos, Ortega, Singson, Crisologo, Roxas, Osmena, Durano, Garcia, Fuentibella, Escudero, and many others numbering 95 political families.

In Bangladesh two combative widows nowadays seem to take it in turns to run their country. Both are the relicts of murdered politicians. Elsewhere daughters have been the main beneficiaries of male politicians’ turbulent departures. In Pakistan, it took little more than a decade for Benazir Bhutto to become prime minister like her father who held the post before he was deposed and sentenced to death in 1977. In Indonesia, nearly four decades elapsed after the ousting of Sukarno, the country’s first president, before his daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was installed as its fifth president. In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi may soon succeed her father Aung San, who negotiated independence from Britain, but was murdered in 1947 before he could become prime minister. In Sri Lanka, its incumbent president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is the widow of a film-star politician and daughter of two prime ministers. It is India, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, was the father of Indira Gandhi, its third and sixth (assassinated 1984), who was the mother of Rajiv, its seventh (assassinated 1991), whose widow, Sonia, now hopes to be its 15th.

Indeed, dynastic political families have flourished in all the democratic countries of the world. After all, the idea of political dynasties is not inherently absurd. Dynasties may be found in plenty of other professions, such as in acting, which share with politics the value of a well-known name and only subjective criteria as to what constitutes ability, and in medicine, law, and the natural sciences, which require some objective qualifications that do not come with a birth certificate, suggesting that heredity may indeed play a part in any continuing family success. 

Personality and beliefs are not quite the same as acumen and effectiveness, as one political commenter has put it, but, hereditary or not, they must still be counted significant components of a politician’s make-up. In politics, it seems, as in so many other professions, nurture and nature both play a part.

And so, like it or not, it really looks like political dynasties in the Philippines, just like in all other democratic countries of the world, are here to stay! 

***

Quote of the Day: “Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.” – Anonymous Commenter

Thought of the Day: “Let us give our republic a fourth power with authority over the youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, habits, and republican morality. Let us establish this Areopagus to watch over our children, to supervise national education, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the republic, to denounce ingratitude, coldness to the country’s public service, egotism, sloth, idleness, and to pass judgment upon the first signs of corruption and pernicious example.” – Simon Bolivar