Sidebar
by Roel R. Landingin
A CLOSE look at election spending reports of seven presidential candidates and three political parties in the May 10 polls reveals that election campaigns are funded in the manner and mold of financing for risky business start-ups.
Money comes mostly from personal funds, family members, and friends rather than a wide network of supporters of the political party, organization, or movement. In business, these private-equity sources of funding are ideal for ventures with low success rates but high pay-offs that are usually shunned by banks and the capital markets.
by Karol Anne M. Ilagan
IN A move that bewildered political analysts, 66 party-list groups went the way of mainstream political organizations during the three-month campaign period for the recently concluded polls and placed tri-media ads worth a total of P597.54 million, based on data from the media monitoring agency Nielsen.
But some big ad spenders among the party-list groups may be in for a very rude surprise themselves.
Sidebar
by Karol Anne Ilagan
PR EXPERT Jonas Campos observes that one reason that political ads failed to work for some party-list groups is because they used the wrong “channel.”
Campos is not trying to spark yet another network war. Rather, he is referring to party-list group ads that did not carry the organization’s message or advocacy and instead showed the faces of mainstream politicians or carried a major party’s slogan.
by Che de los Reyes
The net total spending on television, radio and print ads by the national candidates and party-list groups alone amounted to P4.3 billion across the 90-day official campaign period from February 9 to May 8, 2010.
Based on the PCIJ’s computation, 12-percent of the P4.3 billion corresponds to P517.3 million in expanded value-added tax (EVAT) revenues that should accrue to the public coffers.
by Beatriz Bermundo, Katreena Cosme and Alexandra Francisco
For a certain generation, re-elected Senator Juan Ponce Enrile will always be known as the former martial law administrator and the inveterate coup plotter. But for the 2010 elections, Enrile won on a campaign pitch that he is a man committed to the text generation.
“Gusto ko, happy ka!” Enrile declared in campaign advertisements.
The joys of automated democracy?
by Camille de Asis, Ivan Lim, Mark Tare and Angela Poe
Barring last-minute surprises in the election count, the Noynoy-Nognog tandem will lead the next casting at Malacañang Palace in the next six years, according to funny-boned Filipinos.
Nognog, dark-skinned Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay in real life, will also be installed as the country’s “first black vice president,” they say.
Photo Slideshow
by Karol Ilagan, Katreena Cosme and Camille de Asis
BARANGAY ADDITION HILLS, MANDALUYONG CITY – It’s a historical moment in the country’s electoral history that also turned into a mammoth fiesta for local candidates here who, in defiance of election rules, hang columns of posters and tarpaulins outside the Andres Bonifacio Integrated School.
Photo Slideshow
by Tita C. Valderama
As early as 5 a.m., voters began looking for the designated classrooms for the precincts in which they were registered. There were sheets posted at the entrance of the Commonwealth Elementary School in Quezon City’s second district, the biggest voting center in the city. Then, they had to negotiate through a crowd to look for their sequence number on the voter’s list posted outside the classroom. A member of the Board of Election Inspectors distributes numbers outside to make sure queuing for entrance to the voting room is done orderly. While waiting for their turn, the voters are requested to gather in a holding room adjacent to the voting room for instructions on the voting process.
The media and the elections
by Tita C. Valderama
WHEN media groups started going about the grim task of compiling a list of journalists killed in the November 23, 2009 massacre in Maguindanao, there was a brief moment when the numbers wouldn’t add up.
While it was clear that many of the victims worked for local newspapers and radio stations, some of the victims held positions that did not seem to be connected to journalism.
Sidebar
by Tita C. Valderama
AT 20, Joana will be casting her vote for the first time this Monday. But her excitement has been heightened by the fact that she will also be covering the elections.
Joana has been a journalist for barely a year. Yet while she is looking forward to the polls as a young reporter and a first-time voter, her eagerness has somehow been dampened by widespread skepticism over the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) ability to handle the country’s first nationwide automated elections.
