The sky’s the limit

There is a common comment about the figure cited in news reports about the amount of money spent by national candidates in the just concluded election campaign: it’s nearly impossible to determine the accuracy of the figures.

The producer of the story said as much. The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism said the whopping P211 million a day that it cited was based on Nielsen’s report on published radio, television and print rate cards. As discounts can be given for political ads, the actual amounts can be lower, the PCIJ explained.

At the same time, the amounts do not cover expenses for social media exposure, including payments to influencers. And of course no candidate will admit employing trolls, disinformation armies and paid hacks.

The P211 million also covers only the official three-month campaign period. Campaigning in fact begins long before the official filing of candidacies – except the materials extolling the accomplishments and virtues of the politician during this period don’t include the words “vote for me.” So the actual amount of what constitutes campaign advertising, or of marketing a candidate, is surely far more staggering than P211 million a day.

Who can afford such amounts? The astronomical cost of campaigning reinforces the stranglehold on politics of wealthy clans that have built dynasties on patronage. Candidates with modest means stand no chance.

The most vulnerable to patronage are the poor, and politicians understand it only too well. This tends to erode the political will for genuine poverty alleviation, for investing in the nation’s human capital through quality education, proper nutrition and sufficient health care.

If political fortunes are based on support from the extremely poor, poverty alleviation will get mostly lip service. There are local government officials who encourage squatting because the extremely poor can constitute the voter base of a politician.

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Instead of opening opportunities for genuine advancement in life, the preference is to nurture clientelism – to keep voting masses dependent on a political patron, who freely uses state resources for dispensing dole-outs in cash or kind (and taking personal credit for it), or providing seasonal or contractual employment in government.

Because there is zero tax literacy among the majority of Filipinos, there is no awareness that people’s money is being used for politicians’ personal aggrandizement. All that the masses see is a patron who knows how to share wealth with the needy.

Such need shot up exponentially during the pandemic. Incumbent public officials who took the lead in dispensing ayuda and other poverty alleviation programs were seen as saviors of those in dire straits. This has to be among the reasons for the high number of local government officials and lawmakers who were reelected this year.

Challengers who lacked the enormous state resources to match the ayuda, with incumbent officials claiming credit for the tax-funded aid, had little chance.

All those foreign countries that contributed heavily to the COVAX Facility, which made COVID vaccines widely available to Filipinos, will find that there is little public awareness of their contributions. Instead, the masses are grateful to mayors, congressmen, governors and the president of the republic.

Good governance, corruption issues and human rights took a back seat to survival during the pandemic, both in terms of health and livelihood. Naturally, the state was in the best position to provide the means for survival.

People didn’t care even if the country became buried in debt to finance the pandemic response. The government could beg, steal or borrow, as long as ayuda was doled out, with more promised in case certain candidates won.

No one knows what Pinoys’ overriding concern will be in six years. But if financial difficulties persist until the midterm elections in 2025, the opposition will likely be shut out again, buried in patronage politics that entrenched dynasties and those in power are in the best position to dispense.

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Social media was supposed to level the playing field during elections, allowing candidates with limited resources to bypass mainstream media where ads are expensive, and instead raise their public profiles mostly for free.

The rich, however, know how to deploy their wealth to their advantage. They could hire more people to raise their digital profiles, conduct smear campaigns against their rivals and spread disinformation. The wealthiest candidates, or those with more modest personal wealth but were backed by billionaires, who posted their campaign materials on every available wall, tree and lamppost (everyone got away with it) and took out expensive ads on mainstream media were also the ones who could afford to saturate social media platforms with their pop-up ads.

You wonder if there will ever be political will to pass campaign finance reforms. Logic tells you that politicians would see it in their best interest to make campaigning much less expensive. It would make them less beholden to vested interests in case they win.

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Because of the opaqueness of campaign finance, however, election campaigns are seen as opportunities for building personal or family fortunes, outside the radar of the revenue and money-laundering police. For the huge profits to be made, who cares if politicians become indebted to vested interests?

Jueteng lords, smugglers, corrupt officials and yes (Rodrigo Duterte is correct), drug traffickers have successfully laundered their ill-gotten wealth into election campaigns, financing their career shift to politics. Upon winning, political power guarantees protection for their continued illegal activities, whose proceeds are used for dispensing patronage, which allows them to create formidable dynasties.

There have been proposals to make the public subsidize political parties, with voters also encouraged to contribute a limited amount to their preferred party and its candidates.

But because our political party system is a disaster, such proposals are dismissed as insanity by voters.

In this year’s race, even administration candidate Salvador Panelo lamented the difficulty of campaigning with limited funding. He suggested, among other things, that candidates be given free equal time by mainstream media.

Will this prevent moneyed candidates, however, from buying additional ad time or space? Also, how do candidates get equal exposure on social media?

In the next elections, we can again expect that the sky’s the limit in campaign spending.