One of the biggest scandals in Philippine politics is the inability of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to enforce the law about premature campaigning and its tragic failure to tighten the screws on the use of personal funds to support the electoral drives of political dynasties.
Using flimsy arguments, the Comelec has allowed Sen. Imee Marcos and Las Pinas Rep. Camille Villar to flood the airwaves, social media, newspapers and radio shows with advertisements meant to promote their senatorial bids. Comelec finds it completely legal for anyone to promote herself or himself before the start of the official campaign period since those ads do not label the people they promote as candidates but merely as aspirants. Morally and ethically, the Comelec dropped the bomb by quibbling on these distinctions.
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) condemned the obscene expenses of Imee and Villar even before the start of the official campaign period. “This kind of spending shows just how brazen these political dynasties are in disbursing money that they always recoup once they win,” KMP argued. “They are using their ill-gotten wealth and power to influence the election through advertising that the Comelec never controls, to the detriment of progressive candidates and the Filipino people in general,” KMP chairman and Makabayan senatorial candidate Danilo Ramos explained. “While millions of farmers and fishermen are hungry, here are the Marcoses and Villars flaunting their money and spending billions for their campaigns. This should prompt the people to demand that progressive and pro-people Makabayan candidates be given all the time available to tackle their platforms.
Ronnel Arambulo, a leader of the Pamalakaya fishermen’s federation and another Makabayan senatorial candidate, said “this unlimited campaign spending is an insult to Filipinos who wallow in poverty and hunger. We should not be surprised that the money they are wasting comes from the national treasury or from the exploitation of natural resources. The people should be critical: From whence did the billions spent by Imee and the Villars come? How are they going to recoup such unbelievable expenditures by Imee and the Villars?”
Why would Imee and Villar spend more than P1-billion each for nine months before the October 2024 filing of certificates of candidacy (CoC) in October 2024? Or why would Bong Go, Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Francis Tolentino and other Marcos Jr. and Duterte senatorial bets badger the people with their irrelevant and senseless prattle about themselves if they are merely “aspiring” and not officially running for Senate seats? Moneyed “aspirants” mock the law on election spending since “aspiring” for a Senate seat leads to officially running.
To level the playing field, the Comelec could have issued a snippy statement to say that all aspirants should start their information drives when the official campaign period starts. Simple. Yet, the Comelec, from Chairman George Erwin Garcia and the leavings of the Duterte regime who still sit on the commission, do not bother a bit that Imee, Camille Villar, Bong Go, Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada and a gaggle of politicians pollute the airwaves and the highways and torture the trees with their streamers and tarpaulins bearing their pablum and worthless messages.
Since January 2024, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported, Imee Marcos aired 271 TV and radio ad spots worth P21 million based on published rate cards or before discounts. So intense was the Imee spending that she had 1,145 ad spots worth P303 million in September alone. For the period January-September 2024, Imee’s political ads cost P1 billion based on rate cards. From where did she source the funds for her expensive ads before the official campaign period kicked in? Surely not from Analisa Corr, the controversial Australian interior designer and photographer bruited about by the Australian press as Imee’s half-sister. If the Comelec were to include the pre-official campaign period expenses of Imee and Villar, they would surely surpass the Comelec limit.
Not to be outdone, Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar, the only daughter of billionaire real estate mogul Manuel Villar Jr., which Forbes Magazine claims to be the country’s richest man, also splurged in advertising to promote her bid to replace her mother, Sen. Cynthia Villar, in the Senate. Villar had ads worth P100,000 in March but she flooded TV and radio stations across the country with her ads two months before the filing of CoCs. She paid for ads worth P598 million in August and P477 million the following month. Imee and Villar accounted for 50% of the total P4.1 billion worth of ads ahead of the CoC filing. These figures do not include the production costs of ads, the separate social media campaigns, the maintenance of campaign offices and salaries of campaign staff.
