2016 Elections

Money and the May 2019 Elections

PCIJ Audit: Candidates on Social Media

A “PROMOTIONAL TOUCHPOINT.” That, in advertising and PR parlance, is what social media apparently looks like to candidates for senator in the May 2019 elections, and they have been using it as such even ahead of the official 90-day campaign period, which started last Tuesday.Because the use — and even abuse — of social media […]

Can 'privacy' trump transparency?

SALNs to impeach CJ, other execs
but Palace redacts Cabinet SALNs

A CHIEF JUSTICE was impeached in 2012 for failure to declare the true and detailed list of condo units he owned, and pesos and dollars he had in banks.Ten years prior, a President was forced out of the Palace for collecting millions in kickbacks and commissions from state contracts and excise taxes, as well as […]

SALNs of Cabinet members:
An epidemic of redactions

MORE THAN a year after President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed the Freedom of Information executive order, a practice completely reverse of the policy has been creeping onto some documents requested by the public. The likely tool for the unexpected move: a black marker.Redactions on items declared by Cabinet officials in their Statements of Assets, Liabilities, […]

Unexplained wealth, redacted?

TO REDACT or not to redact. Which could avoid or attract scrutiny and censure?Redactions are not the only issue that could arise if public officials would shade or black out the true, detailed, and complete facts of their wealth.Big and small discrepancies in the content of SALNs they have filed across periods of time could […]

Sad stats on women and children

THE MAGNA CARTA OF WOMEN, or Republic Act No. 9710, passed into law on August 14, 2009, or over eight years ago. It affirmed the role of women in nation-building, assured the “substantive equality” of women and men, and declared as state policies the empowerment of women, providing them equal access to resources and development […]

Media agents snared P360M in commission

Some 50 TV, radio, print outfits
did not submit all pol ads docs?

SOME CANDIDATES may have willfully mocked their lawful duty to file election-spending reports with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) but they are not the only ones who did so. Like these wayward candidates, many media agencies also failed to file reports with the poll body, in defiance of their obligation in law.This is even though […]

Campaign finance in May 2016

Bask in name recall, spend a mite:
Or how Duterte’s kids win elections

CANDIDATES IN Philippine elections usually complain about what many of them say are outdated, low campaign-spending caps. But the Dutertes of Davao City apparently have no problem with spending limits – at least when they’re running in their family’s political turf.As a mayoralty candidate of Davao City in the 2016 elections, Sara Duterte-Carpio spent only […]

Campaign finance in May 2016

Pasay City bets for mayor deflate,
omit key election expense items

ONE OF them was determined to keep his post while the other two wanted to wrest from him the title of Mayor of Pasay City, one of the smallest cities in Metro Manila but which is nevertheless classified as first-class in terms of income. Yet Jose Antonio F. Roxas, Jorge C. del Rosario, and Antonino […]

Campaign finance in May 2016

Iloilo City bets for mayor fail
to report full bill for radio ads

IN THEIR bid to be Iloilo City’s chief executive from 2016 to 2019, then incumbent Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog (Liberal Party) and Dr. Marigold Gonzalez (Independent, but with support from the United Nationalist Alliance) staged a costly advertising war that later ran into a total of more than P1 million for radio spots alone. Yet […]

Slow, steady progress on campaign finance

Only 54 overspenders of 44,600 bets in May 2016

ONE WOULD think that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should be happy that the number of candidates who went over the prescribed campaign spending limits in last year’s elections plunged drastically from the 2013 figure. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, with the poll body’s Campaign Finance Office (CFO), saying it is still […]

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