Payback

How do you express gratitude to someone who gives you P30 million, tax-free, no accounting required? Or even P1 million?

The official answer, if you’ve just won public office with a little help from multimillion-peso donations, is to promise to be a dedicated, competent public servant. Or, in the language of the Macapagal clan, to do right as a public servant, do your best, and let God take care of the rest.

The unofficial answer is that nothing comes free in this world, and every cent donated to a winning candidate’s war chest must be paid back in some way. The spoils of victory must be shared and debts must be repaid.

A campaign contribution of P10,000 or even P100,000 may truly have no strings attached; the donor may genuinely want to help a particular candidate win without seeking a quid pro quo. But add another zero and the amount becomes an investment. And a wise investor wants to turn a profit. An IOU simply won’t do.

The abysmal pay in government makes it unlikely for a winning candidate to repay campaign contributions in cash, unless he has a vast personal fortune that he’s willing to spread around. Paying back in kind is easier, and is the preferred mode of repayment anyway.

Payback could be a government contract, or an appointment to public office for the donor himself or individuals he endorses to his winning candidate. It could be a public utility franchise, or an executive order or piece of legislation that will benefit the donor. It could be a lucrative sinecure in a government corporation.

The lack of transparency in campaign spending makes it easy for winning candidates, from the president down to local executives, to pay back campaign supporters using government largesse. This is a major cause of corruption at all levels of government. In the 1998 elections, several political strategists estimated that a presidential campaign would require about P2 billion. Back then the peso was stronger, fuel prices were lower and consumer goods were cheaper.

This year candidates must have scrimped immensely, since President Arroyo declared campaign expenditures of only P333.36 million, of which P326.48 million came from donations to her war chest. The amount, Malacañang pointed out, was still below the P420-million spending limit for presidential candidates.

The President’s opposition rival, actor Fernando Poe Jr., declared campaign expenses of only P92.1 million, of which P83.9 million came from contributions. His family accounted for P30 million of the donations, according to the report.

The names of known heavy hitters in the "donor community" were nowhere to be found in the list of contributors to the war chests of presidential candidates. Did the billionaires head for Antarctica during the campaign? Were contributions made on condition that the donors should never be identified?

What about those who contribute helicopters, light planes and other means of transportation so candidates and their entourage could move around our 7,100 islands? Having constant access to such transportation facilities is already a major edge for someone seeking national office. Are such donations factored in? How does a candidate repay such generosity?

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At least the President’s personal lawyer was brave enough to be identified. Pancho Villaraza’s contribution, according to the President’s declaration: P30 million. That’s a whopping amount for lesser mortals like you and me. Villaraza can always say that he is a close family friend of the Macapagal-Arroyos. I guess he no longer cares if people think he’s the one calling the shots in the judiciary, or that his law firm is perceived to be the most powerful in the country. "The Firm"? Every administration has one.

The other major individual donors to the Arroyo campaign are unknown to the public. That should make debt repayment easier.

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No one can be sure how forthright Poe was in his own declaration. At the start of the campaign, when he was topping every survey and his victory seemed certain, there were reports of a mad scramble to contribute to his war chest. Everybody loves a winner. Even his opposition rival, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, admitted that he lost many supporters to the Poe camp.

These days the talk is that at the start of the campaign, Poe truly did not want to be indebted to anyone, wanting to owe few favors if ever he became president. So he spent his own funds – a considerable amount, since Da King is possibly the highest paid actor in this country. But he soon realized that he might have to spend his entire life savings to finance a presidential campaign. So more donations were accepted.

By that time, however, there was uncertainty in the donor community over challenges to his citizenship as well as his sliding poll numbers. By the time more funds finally started trickling in, local supporters were grumbling that money was not reaching them.

Then in the final weeks of the campaign, the President closed in and eventually overtook Poe in the surveys. People who feared they had placed their bets on the wrong horse then started running for cover.

This story did not come from Palace spinmeisters but from the Poe camp.

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Even some people who think they are insiders in the administration and opposition camps will probably never know the true story behind money flows during the campaign. No sane candidate signs receipts for campaign contributions in this country. Banking procedures allow major donors to remain anonymous.

And no matter what a candidate declares in that requisite statement of campaign contributions and expenditures, it is unlikely that the Commission on Elections will verify the information.

There have been proposals for campaign finance reforms, to include some cap on campaign contributions, but you can understand why lawmakers don’t want to be bothered with such trivial matters.

For those who placed the right bets in this year’s elections, it will soon be payback time.

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OUT WITH THE OLD… And let’s hope many of the lawmakers in both chambers of Congress whose terms are ending will stay out of legislation for good. Not that those who will replace them provide much cause for rejoicing. Two senators have simply been replaced by their children. We now have a mother-and-son tandem at the Senate; neither mother nor child gives much hope for serious lawmaking. Relatives are also taking over the seats vacated by spouses and parents in the House of Representatives. No wonder our Congress is run like a mom-and-pop enterprise.