Costly campaigns

Why do politicians devise all sorts of devious ways to get their dirty paws on public funds for their own use?

Apart from the obvious reasons – plain greed, and because they can (they think) – there is the enormous cost of running for public office.

Winning candidates begin building up their war chests for the next election campaign as soon as they are installed in office. Often, they use their position to build up the war chests of their family members who also want to run for election. This could be everyone of voting age in the family.

Turning politics into a family enterprise has plummeted to such appalling depths that dynastic folks don’t even see anything wrong with polluting public space with their campaign materials featuring the entire family running for public office. Greed has become a source of family pride. In some places, members of the same family, bearing the same surnames, are battling each other for the same posts.

If their pets could qualify, the dogs and cats would also be fielded for any government position – as therapy animals, perhaps? At least the pets – sure to be decked out in cutesy outfits and diapers – would be pleasant to look at, unlike the photoshopped images of politicians.

Those Supreme Court rulings – the first declaring that there’s no such thing as premature campaigning, and the second allowing the unfettered display of campaign materials on private property – widened the advantage of moneyed candidates. They can pay to have their materials displayed on every piece of private property, long before the official start of the campaign period, without worrying about violating election rules.

These days, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) must also contend with “unli” campaigning through social media and online influencers.

*      *      *

Politicians themselves should see a short campaign period, tight regulation of campaign finance and campaign activities as means for drastically reducing the cost of seeking elective office.

As things stand, the sky’s the limit in campaign spending, which naturally favors wealthy candidates.

But even the biggest thieves in politics don’t have bottomless pockets. Plus a lot of them want to walk away from an election campaign, win or lose, with a positive net when expenditures are deducted from contributions.

There’s only a miniscule fraction of the population with the means to invest heavily in candidates – and such donors tend to put their money on those deemed to be sure winners.

So where else can campaign funds be sourced from? Where else but from public coffers.

That’s what the 2025 General Appropriations Act is: a budget for the election campaigns (apart from the usual sources of kickbacks and contracts for family businesses) of all those shameless congressmen and senators, with President Marcos giving them a wink of approval.

Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, who has been sounding the alarm over massive corruption in public infrastructure projects, says lawmakers not only earmark projects for implementation, but also pick the contractors and suppliers – usually owned by their families or their cronies.

Those are layers of graft and conflict of interest. Fortunately for the thieves, the graftbusters are sleeping on the job, waiting for retirement (or a sinecure in some government corporation) and the receipt of their fat retirement packages and pensions.

Apart from awarding themselves sweetheart contracts in government, politicians brazenly take personal credit for tax-funded aid programs, for election purposes.

Magalong, speaking with “Storycon” on One News last Monday, admitted that when lawmakers show up during such aid distribution activities, ordinary public servants – and even some local government executives – can do nothing about it.

Perhaps mini people power might work in such events – meaning, some folks in the crowd can boo or shoo the epal politicians off the stage.

*      *      *

Congressmen and senators pay lip service to helping the poor, while hating the conditional cash transfer or Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. First because the 4Ps cash aid is dispensed through ATM, leaving no space for epal credit grabbing. And second because it requires children’s education and maternal health care as conditions for ayuda.

The 4Ps is not even supposed to be a perpetual aid program. Its success is measured in terms of the elimination of the need for it, or at least the progressive shrinking of the program.

For many of the unworthy people who have entered politics, however, political survival hinges on a constituency with a lifetime dependence on handouts.

So lawmakers slashed the budget for the 4Ps by P50 billion, and gave themselves P26 billion for handing out the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program or AKAP.

Also increased by P9.5 billion, from the amount proposed in the National Expenditure Program, was funding for the other unconditional cash transfer, the AICS, or Assistance for Individuals in Crisis Situations.

AICS and AKAP, indistinguishable from each other except for the names, should be renamed PPP, circa Marcos 2.0. Not for public-private partnership, but for Pondo para sa Politiko.

Yesterday, the tone-deaf Department of Social Welfare and Development asked the Comelec to exempt AKAP from the election ban on the distribution of ayuda. How did the DSWD survive during election periods pre-AKAP?

Today, there is heightened public awareness of politicians’ efforts to claim undue personal credit for the unconditional dole-out programs.

Whether they can be shamed into keeping their snouts out of the taxpayers’ trough, however, is doubtful.

Making election campaigns less costly and tightly regulated could reduce the propensity of politicians to dip their dirty fingers into public funds, or falsely claim personal credit for state-funded cash handouts.

With the current crop of senators, congressmen and other politicians, however, this looks more like wishful thinking.