Aquino, Villar election expenses exceed government's budget for poor, says watchdog

MANILA, Philippines - As Nacionalista Party standard bearer Manuel Villar and Liberal Party presidential bet Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III have both been promising to service the poor once elected, the amounts spent by the top two campaign spenders exceed the budgets of government agencies helping the poor, the watchdog Pera’t Pulitika has observed.

Based on the monitoring of the consortium, Villar spent P273 million in the first 60 days of the campaign. Aquino spent P176 million during the same period.

Che delos Reyes of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism said Villar’s “tandem ads” with running mate Loren Legarda cost an additional P15.8 million, Aquino has additional P29,800 for tandem ads with Mar Roxas.

She said Villar’s spending alone in two months is way more than the 2010 budget of the Department of Education’s School Health and Nutrition Program (P205 million); the Quirino Memorial Medical Center (P207 million) and the Amang Rodriguez Medical Center (P179 million).

Villar’s and Aquino’s spending combined were found to also be way more than this year’s budget of the Tondo Medical Center (P132 million); the Health Care Assistance to indigents in public hospitals (P122.8 million); the National Anti-Poverty Commission (P112 million) and the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (P60.5 million).

“These are the agencies they (would) want (to focus on) because they supposedly serve the poor,” PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas said.

Based on the same monitoring, former president Joseph Estrada spent P86.4 million in 60 days while Gilberto Teodoro of Lakas-Kampi CDM spent P28.3 million during the same period. Evangelist Bro. Eddie Villanueva, in the first 60 days, spent P4.9 million. As for Richard Gordon, he spent P47.5 million from February 9 to March 8.

Mangahas said that the fact that the candidates have exceeded the limits of the minutes for television ads does not help, with the politicians finding ways to go around election laws to continue to spend to woo the voters.

“We don’t want leaders who are going around our laws... Are the campaign spending limits still relevant?” she said.

In fact, Roberto Cadiz of the lawyers’ group Libertas also said that based on the same monitoring, Legarda has also breached the 120-minute cap on her television advertisement for ABS-CBN. Legarda, as of April 17, already has 128.5 minutes of advertisements in the said network.

 “Ms. Legarda is the third biggest spender (among all the candidates). She has outspent all candidates other than Villar and Noynoy,” Cadiz said.

Mangahas maintained that the purpose of their monitoring was to push for reforms in election laws.