Election laws lost in cyberspace
by Jaemark Tordecilla and Justine Espina-Letargo
These days, the number of Filipino Internet users is pegged at around 24 million and mobile phone users at around 63 million. Not surprisingly, candidates for both national and local posts have taken interest on those figures, and have been busy putting up complex, interactive websites of their own, even as they litter popular online publications, blogs, and social networks with political propaganda. Text-blasting, or the sending of unsolicited SMS messages, appears to be on the rise as well.
Sidebar
by Jaemark Tordecilla
IN MANY ways, what is starting to happen on the Internet has been happening in the mobile realm. The mobile phone penetration rate in the country was estimated to hit 75.2 percent in 2010, from only 42.7 percent in 2005, and now text-blasting is being used for everything from campaign messages to volunteer coordination to black propaganda.
by Ed Lingao
IN THE unnervingly expensive race for the Philippine presidency, the candidates who splurge are those less open to discussing their campaign spending, while candidates who spend the least are the most open to talking about their finances.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) managed to ask most of the presidential candidates about their positions on various issues involving campaign finance: where they get their campaign money, their major donors, and their expenses.
No free pass for pre-campaign pol ads
by Malou Mangahas
THEY probably thought they got a free pass to flood television with political ads beyond the airtime and spending limits set in law, having run commercials before the 90-day campaign period could start last February 9.
But the top candidates for president and vice president, as well as those who donated and bankrolled their pre-campaign ads, had better think again, according to lawyers and officials of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
Curious, creative contracts skirt law?
by Karol Anne M. Ilagan
JUST a mere month into the 90-day official campaign period, three presidential candidates have already used up more than half of their allowed ad airtime in the country’s two top networks.
This is even as data from media monitoring agency Nielsen Media indicate a relatively tempered ad-spending among the candidates, compared to the three months prior to the start of the campaign period.
TV spins of top bets ‘not Bible truth’
by Karol M. Ilagan
HE has racked up nearly a billion pesos worth of TV ad spots, by network rate cards, in the last three months alone, but indications are that Nacionalista Party standard bearer Senator Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar Jr. can comfort himself that so far every centavo of that has been money well spent.
Read more…
| Posted Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Pre-campaign clutter or spin central?
by Che de los Reyes
IF the law on campaign spending and political advertising were imposed before the official campaign period began last week, one presidential candidate would have already overspent in the past three months alone, even as he joins four others who would have exceeded the broadcast limit for TV.
Money & politics: The truth (not) well told
by Malou Mangahas
The popular perception is that running an election campaign has the potential of reducing a candidate to penury. Yet none of those who had served or today want to serve as president and vice president has come close to breaching the spending limit – or even to going shirtless and hungry – according to the separate “Statements of Electoral Contributions and Expenses” they had filed with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) over the last 12 years.
The mysteries of money & politics
by Malou Mangahas
A BILLIONAIRE and four other millionaires lead the pack of those who want to serve as the15th president of the Philippines, all invariably swearing by an anti-poverty platform, and with some purposely harking on their poverty roots to spin and curry favor with majority of voters who are poor.
