ELECTIONS in the Philippines, especially for candidates to national office, are considered to be primarily “air war” affairs.
This was, in fact, what happened again in the May 2013 elections, which saw most of the moneyed candidates for senator, and the administration and opposition political coalitions, splurging on political advertisements like there was no tomorrow.
Our latest report. “The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013″, is authored by PCIJ Training Director Che de los Reyes.
According to Nielsen data that PCIJ reviewed, the candidates for senator, the political parties, and some party-list groups waged pitched ad battles on television during the last balloting, and at the cost of stupendous sums.
TV ads seemed to have worked wonders for the victors. There were a few others, however, who spent big but lost big, too.
During the 90-day official campaign period, the 12 winning candidates for senator and their political coalitions — administration Team PNoy and the opposition United Nationalist Alliance or UNA — altogether spent an indicative total of P1.18 billion on TV ads alone.
Five other candidates for senator who lost incurred another P466.58 million in TV ad expenses during the period.
Team PNoy and UNA, meanwhile, spent a combined total of P154.32 million on TV ads that featured their candidates.
But that is not the end of the story.
Even before the official campaign period could start, Nielsen data show that the two coalitions and 14 candidates for senator had aired “advocacy ads” from Nov. 11, 2012 to Feb. 11, 2013. Altogether, these ads amounted to another P424.87 million.
Combined, the sums show that the composite spending on TV ads alone of the two coalitions and their senatorial candidates totaled P2.23 billion in six months (November 11, 2012 to May 11, 2013), or an average of P371.11 million a month, or P12.37 million a day
And wait, there’s more.
Nine senatorial candidates and one party-list group would have breached the airtime limit for political ads on TV had it not been for a crucial order from the Supreme Court regarding a new rule being imposed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). One of those nine candidates would have also surpassed the campaign-spending limit.
Seven of the nine actually won, while the party-list group, Buhay, eventually garnered the most number of votes among party-list groups and is poised to occupy three seats in Congress.
Last April 16, less than a month before the elections, the Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the “aggregate time limit” rule imposed by Comelec.
The TRO effectively reverted the counting of advertising minutes to the “per station” basis, just like in the May 2010 presidential polls.
Read our latest report, The ‘air war’ for votes in May 2013:
Main: Without SC TRO, 9 Senate bets, Buhay liable for breaching TV ads airtime limit
Sidebar: Serious, furious
Sidebar: Pre-campaign ad blast