Seeking transparency in election campaign spending

ELECTION reform advocates have kicked off an ambitious campaign to monitor the role money will play in the mid-term polls in May.

In a conference Monday gathering local and international experts on campaign finance, the Money and Politics Working Group (MAP-Work) announced a pilot project that will track expenditures by candidates in selected races throughout the country. The monitor will focus on expenses for the media, rallies and other events, direct mailings of election propaganda, and other key activities to be identified with help from MAP-Work’s local partners.

“Promoting transparency in campaign finance will not necessarily translate to good governance,” conceded Beverly Hagerdon-Thakur of MAP-Work member, IFES-Philippines, as she opened the conference at Westin Philippine Plaza in Pasay City. “But it will be a clear step in enhancing trust in the electoral system.”

“I commend you for assuming a formidable task,” Christian Monsod, former elections chief, told participants in his keynote speech. “You are going to do battle in the trenches and your obstacles are indeed formidable.”

Monsod — under whose chairmanship the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the early 1990s investigated sources of contributions to campaign funds — listed lack of data as the main obstacle to any serious effort to monitor campaign spending. “One of your tasks is to convince the Comelec to organize and analyze the data and make them useful to researchers,” Monsod said.

Philippine elections are regarded as among the costliest, if account is taken of the differences in per capita incomes across countries. An IFES study referred to at Monday’s conference said that as far back as the 1960 elections, the amount spent on each vote in the Philippines was some 14 times greater than the comparable amount spent in the United States.

The Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms (IPER) estimates that a candidate for president, for instance, needs at least P2.5 billion to run a campaign. For mayors, according to IPER, the campaign cost can run up to P100 million.

By law, all candidates are required to file with the Comelec a “full, true and itemized” statement of campaign contributions and expenditures, within 30 days after the day of the polls. Contributors are also tasked to give Comelec a detailed account of their donations.

As things are, Comelec’s task is largely ministerial, receiving the reports and filing them. Election reform advocates lament that the poll body is not equipped with the manpower nor the skills to go deeper into the sources of the contributions, and monitor the flow of spending at the other end.

Monsod, in the same speech, issued a reminder about the inadequacy of existing mechanisms to cover the flow of money that do not enter the official, reported documents. “Money from jueteng, drugs or kidnapping,” Monsod said. “As well as contributions expensed under another account or personal contributions — all of which are given on the condition that they are not reported and which are used for purposes that are illegal, i.e. vote-buying, bribes to military/police, or Comelec officials or even to media.”

Monsod added: “Our politicians have perfected the art of lying with regard to contributions and expenditures.” He said he was “curious” how MAP-Work proposes to monitor the flow of such kind of money. “Not textbook solutions or shotgun approaches that we are already know, but measures specifically applicable in the Philippine setting.”

Unfazed at this stage, though, MAP-Work emphasized the potential for reforms, sharing lessons learned from other countries that have made progress in creating more transparency in campaign finance. The group will utilize the expertise of international political finance practitioners to train its partner-NGOs in the Philippines.

Lolota Cigane, for example, was key in former-Communist Latvia’s work to reform its campaign financing system and is in town to help train local groups. Cigane said Latvia’s campaign finance system was “anarchic” only five years ago. Today, Cigane reports, “the glass is half-full”: the flow of funds is increasingly becoming transparent, contributions from illegal sources such as organized and other crime are filtered out by strict rules, and a cap is enforced on overall campaign spending. (View her presentation.)

It was a long and hard struggle, Cigane said, as reforming the behavior of politicians and political parties is akin to what she referred to as the ‘toothpaste effect’ — once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s almost impossible to put it back in. “Once politicians get used to a system, it’s very difficult to change their ways,” Cigane said. “But there can be change.” With the consistent work of election reform advocates, NGOs, and independent media practitioners in Latvia, steps were taken toward enforcing stricter rules for campaign contributions and spending.

Local groups, while admitting that political reality in the Philippines is different from Latvia’s, are looking to it for lessons. Vincent Lazatin, conference co-convenor and Executive Director of the Transparency and Accountability Network, says Latvia’s case illustrates the imperative for a strong elections commission. “The Comelec has been our weakness,” Lazatin said. “While there are good people in the commission, there is a need for a strong and independent leadership. Such is the story that plays over and over in the Philippines.”

Thus recognizing the crucial part of the poll body, MAP-Work’s local and international experts will conduct trainings as well for Comelec commissioners on subjects such as election technology, voter education, legal reform, and dispute resolution.

Proposals to reform campaign finance are pending in both the House of Representatives and Senate. They seek, among others, to prevent the flow of illegally sourced funds into campaign kitties, as well as provide state subsidy to political parties.

Local election reform advocates such as IPER’s Ramon Casiple argues similarly. In his presentation at MAP-Work’s conference, Casiple listed state subsidy to political parties as among the ways by which the country’s party system can be strengthened, which in turn, he said, is one of the paths to long-term electoral reform.

But other experts argue the other way. For Marcin Walecki, IFES senior advisor on political finance reforms, providing subsidy to political parties will only make public funds vulnerable to corruption. “What will happen is that you will allow public funds to be used for buying votes,” Walecki remarked.

In the 2001 elections alone, according to IPER’s accounts, one of every 10 voters was offered cash or material goods to vote for a particular candidate; of those who were offered, seven of every 10 accepted.

For Walecki, who has worked for many years inside and outside his native Poland, what is necessary is to implement existing rules on campaign finance, enforce disclosures and audit them, and create “a strong and independent” political finance regulator. (View Dr. Walecki’s slides.)

The Money and Politics Working Group is composed of the Transparency and Accountability Network, Consortium on Electoral Reform, Lawyers’ League for Liberty, Philippine Political Science Association, and Access to Information Network. The monitoring project is to be funded in part by the US Agency for International Development.

Read the full text of Monsod’s keynote speech. And this is the powerpoint presentation of Libertas’ Atty. Luie Guia on laws related to campaign finance.

Learn more about IFES’ global work on political finance here.