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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Public Offices for Sale By Antonio C. Abaya March 10, 2004 It was CNN�s Walter Rodgers who, in a story on campaign financing about two weeks ago, reported that the hundreds of millions of dollars that George W. Bush spent in his campaign to win the presidency in 2000 were actually more than the COMBINED totals that Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK, President Jacques Chirac of France, Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder of Germany, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain spent to win their offices. (And it is not just in the campaign itself that money flows. Even the US primary system is tainted by money. CNN�s coverage of the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses revealed that early favorite Howard Dean raised $41 million, and eventual winner John Kerry $28.5 million, just for the exercise, most of it to buy TV airtime for their ads.) And it is not only because the geographical area of the US is bigger than that of the five West European countries put together, and hence TV ads in the US must cost considerably and proportionately higher than similar ads in Western Europe. There is the added consideration that, operating as he did under a presidential system, Bush had to campaign (and buy TV airtime) in every state of the union, while Blair and the others, being all children of the parliamentary system, had to battle it out only in their respective electoral districts, each one not even as big or as populous as, say, Orange County in Greater Los Angeles. Add to this the fact that in several West European countries, campaign expenses are actually subsidized by the state. It is no secret that the American political system, of which ours is a corrupted copy, is heavily weighted in favor of Big Money, since few candidates for national offices have the kind of personal wealth that can easily supply the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars needed to wage a successful campaign. It is no surprise, therefore, that the $80 billion that have been budgeted for the reconstruction of Iraq have been farmed out, without any public bidding, to big corporations which have been heavy contributors to the campaign kitty of George W. And it is not just the Republicans who are redolent with the built-in odor of corruption. Two hours before he vacated the White House in January 2001, outgoing President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, extended presidential pardon to convicted racketeer Marc Rich, who had contributed $250,000 to his campaign kitty and whose then wife Denise had given another $400,000 to the Clinton Library. (See my article �The Incredible Mark Jimenez� of Dec 26, 2002). ***** The role and cost of TV political ads was the topic for discussion in Tina Monzon-Palma�s Talkback program on ANC about two weeks ago, where I was asked to guest together with Housing Secretary and GMA campaign spokesman Mike Defensor, Roco campaign manager Jimmy Galvez-Tan, and veteran political packager Reli German. It was Reli, naturally, who supplied the pertinent infomation for waging a successful campaign for a national office in the Philippine political system. A single 30-second spot on ABS-CBN or GMA-7 costs a cool P150,000, excluding production costs. Because the purpose of a 30-second spot is to implant name recall in the viewers� mind, not to expound on the candidate�s platform of government, it has to be repeated over and over in a single day, everyday for several weeks, up to the day before Election Day itself. This can run up to quite a bill. We are only a little over a month into the campaign period and, so far, well-funded candidates such as Panfilo Lacson, Juan Ponce Enrile and Mar Roxas have already spent several tens of millions of pesos for their 30-seconders., judging from the frequency of their TV ads. And we can be sure that in the last 30 days of the campaign, all hell will break loose as these and the other candidates splurge out their hundreds of millions, even billions, of pesos to buy the TV airtime that will guarantee their name recall on E-Day. Reli says that a serious candidate for national office has to have at least P5 billion in his or her campaign kitty, and at least 40 percent of this, or P2 billion, has to be budgeted for TV spots. TV is by far the most effective medium for implanting name recall, and those who cannot afford it, no matter how qualified they may be, are simply not going to win. I can believe that, but the question has to be asked: Is this good? Is this democratic? Is this the way that things should be? Since it all boils down to money, anyway, why don �t we just sell the national offices to the highest bidders, and do away with the tension, the suspense, the muckraking, the rancor, the hypocrisy, and the acrimony? Although the intended theme of Tina�s program was the role and efficacy of TV ads in the current political campaign, I took the minority and off-tangent position that the high cost of TV advertising, arguably the biggest single item in a candidate�s campaign budget, plants the seeds of corruption in our political system, as it does in the American. Our weaker political institutions and enfeebled judiciary just make the corruption here more blatant and easier to get away with than in the US. After contributing substantially to a candidate�s P5 billion campaign kitty, a major funder is not going to sit idly by as his candidate reaps the bounty of his generosity. He expects to be rewarded with a favored position in the new or re-elected order, either with rent-seeking positions for him and his surrogates, or with fat government contracts for his corporations, so that he can double, triple, quadruple or more his original �investment� in the shortest possible time. Unless the cost of running for national office is drastically reduced, as I had proposed in �Provisional Government� (Jan. 28), and �Go, Comelec, Go� (Feb 11), widespread corruption will remain a permanent feature of our political landscape. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the March 20, 2004 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine.. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Public Offices for Sale� Sir, I cannot agree with you more. Thus, I have always wanted a shift to a parliamentary form of government or national assembly for four reasons. I don't trust the voting mentality of the dominant "masa". They vote with their hearts and not with their brains. I'd rather give this responsibility to the assemblymen to choose among themselves the prime minister that will head the government. The people may elect a ceremonial president, whose main task is to dissolve the assembly if the people are dissatisfied with it and call for another election of assemblymen. This way People Power or Edsa uprising will not be repeated again. And lastly, unconscionable campaign spending, which is a source of corruption, will be reduced considerably as the election will be localized and candidates will be campaigning only in their respective districts instead of nationwide. Cesar M. De los Reyes, [email protected] March 15, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww HI , Tony! I agree with most of your articles and enjoy even those I don�t agree with. Why are you so down on Poe? I am voting for him.J I am beginning to be convinced that we should shift to parliamentary. I understand that Poe is for it. Rudy M. Villarica, rmv@kda March 15, 2004 MY REPLY. Hello, Rudy. I doubt if FPJ understands what the parliamentary system is all about. He hasn�t made a movie on it yet. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Keep writing, Tony. You make sense! Lolita Delgado Fansler, [email protected] March 17, 2004 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |