Second abstract approved by Australian Political Science Association: Political finance in the Philippines Amado M. Mendoza, Jr. University of the Philippines Any fruitful analysis of the regulation of political finance in the Philippines must be placed in the context of a candidate-centered (as opposed to party-centered) electoral system. Candidates are primary and voters chose them regardless of the formers party affiliation. Candidates seek to develop personal reputations of being helpful and accessible to candidates instead of strengthening their party identities. This decentralization lends to a weak regulatory regime for elections in general. The growth of the population and the unchanged length of the campaign period for national elections challenges spending and donor limits. There is greater and greater recourse to more expensive electronic mass media to reach a growing electorate. This privileges candidates with fatter campaign chests. While candidates report expenses and the names of donors after the elections, these are empty rituals. It remains to be seen if a new formed unit within the electoral body can make a difference in ensuring transparency of campaign finance. What is quite clear from the reports is the preponderant weight of big players coming from corporations explicitly prohibited from making campaign donations to avoid conflict of interest problems. An ambiguous provision that bans donations from firms but not from their owners and officers is at play here. Ordinary people do not make donations as a rule since they expect the traffic to be the other way around. The key conundrum is how to get Filipino politicians, who benefit from loose and ambiguous laws on campaign finance rules, agree to tighten to ships hatches.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:25:53 +0000
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