Top bets for prez, VP, Senate spend P54m daily on pol ads

By Floreen Simon and Malou Mangahas
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

(Continuation)

Last big binge

Romualdez, however, seems to have indulged in a last-minute binge in the week immediately before the start of the official campaign spending period. For sure, he was not the only candidate to do so. But Romualdez seems to have outdone nearly everyone, including those running for the country’s top two posts.

From Feb. 1-8, Romualdez placed TV, radio, print, and outdoor ads to the tune of P120.7 million – even more than presidential candidate Binay, who wound up with an ad-placement bill of P115.7 million during the same period. Romualdez’s pre-campaign spree is also double that of Poe’s P58 million and nearly triple of Duterte’s P37.5 million. Indeed, Romualdez was bested only by another presidential contender, Roxas, who spent P136.3 million in those eight days in February.

Other senatoriables who spent considerable sums between Feb. 1 and 8 include Recto and former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) chief Joel Villanueva. Recto and Villanueva — who is also part of the administration’s senatorial lineup — each spent some P47 million to place ads during that period, or an average of close to P6 million per day.

There are also senatorial candidates like former Senator Panfilo Lacson and Gatchalian who right before the official campaign period began spent less than Recto and Villanueva, but more than all those vying for the vice-presidential seat.

Lacson, who is a guest on the LP senatorial slate,  spent some P36 million and Gatchalian, P34.6 million.  Contrast those against Robredo, the top spender among the vice-presidential candidates, who chalked up a total of P29.67 million in ad-placement buys during February’s first eight days, or against Cayetano, who ran up a total of P14 million.

The rest of the candidates for vice president also placed ads during the same period, but with more modest totals. Escudero’s ad placements from Feb. 1 to 8, for instance, had a sum of P2.65 million while those of Honasan (tandem ads with Binay) was at P2.37 million. Ferdinand Marcos Jr.  had P611,000 worth of ad placements and Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, another independent candidate, had P400,000. (Marcos, like fellow vice presidential wannabe Cayetano, is a member of the Nacionalista Party.)

LP bets beat meter

At least seven senatorial candidates also beat Escudero, Honasan, Marcos, and Trillanes in ad-placement spending right before the limits on campaign spending came in effect. From Feb. 1 to 8, former Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla placed ads that had him footing a bill of P15 million while former Pampanga Governor Mark Lapid had ad placements worth P14.13 million. Both Petilla and Lapid are part of the administration’s senatorial slate.

Gordon, for his part, had a total of P5.88 million and Manila Vice Mayor Francisco ‘Isko Moreno’ Domogoso, P5.16 million. Former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima had P4.35 million and former Senator Juan Miguel ‘Migz’ Zubiri, P3.3 million.

The lesser known LP candidates for senator — Cresente Paez, COOP NATCCO party-list representative, and Nariman Ambolodto, assistant secretary of Muslim affairs and special concerns of the Department of the Interior and Local Government — have not shown up at all in Nielsen’s ad-spending reports. Not a single centavo of ads paid by them or the LP appear in Nielsen’s reports for both the pre-campaign and the campaign periods.

The ad-placement spending of 18 senatorial candidates captured by Nielsen’s monitoring from Feb. 1 to 8 amounts to P339.4 million in all. This represents some 42 percent of the close to P800 million spent by national candidates and political parties to place ads immediately before Comelec began taking note of how much they were spending.  It also reflects the fierce competition among the many senatorial candidates over the 12 slots available in the Upper House.

Paling in comparison is the total amount spent by the five aspirants to the vice presidency during the same period: P47.48 million, of which only a sliver came from Marcos, who has been the surprising perennial lead in surveys by different groups in the last few months. Defensor-Santiago’s running mate — the only son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos — would also spend much less than his rivals on ad placements from Feb. 9 to Mar. 31: P42.84 million or a mere six percent of the total ad spend of the five vice presidential candidates during that period.

Current presidential survey frontrunner Duterte has even less of a share in the total ad spend of the five contenders to the country’s highest post from Feb. 1 to 8: one percent. He would also remain fourth among the presidentiables (including one Apolonio Comia Soguilon, replacement candidate for the late Roy Seneres) in terms of ad spending from Feb. 9 to Mar. 31.

Including half of tandem ad placements with Cayetano, Duterte’s P110.36-million spend for that period comes to only 10.55 percent of the total P1.04 billion poured by the presidentiables into ads in a span of 7.5 weeks.

Upticks & negatives

Both Marcos and Duterte, however, made quantum leaps in their respective ad-placement spends from last February to March. Like most of the other candidates for president and vice president, both men acquired more ads in March. Unlike the others, however, Marcos and Duterte both spent relatively little in February.

Marcos spent P362,200 from Feb. 9 to 29; from Mar. 1 to 31, though, he accumulated an ad-placement spend of P42.48 million or a rise of  11,628 percent. Similarly, Duterte spent only P144,000 from Feb. 9 to 29. The following month, however, his ad-placement spend reached P110.22 million, or an increase of 76,416 percent.

Curiously, the Nielsen reports include negative ads run against two candidates in particular: Binay and Marcos.

According to Nielsen data, anti-Binay ads continued to run on TV in the week before the start of the official campaign period, with their placements in ABS-CBN and GMA-7 having a total value of P25 million.  All were supposedly paid for by the Makati City-based A.B. Ison Pilot Construction and Trading Corp., which had also placed similar ads on TV in January that amounted to P8,835,162. This is despite a ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that bars private corporations from donating money to political candidates or to any partisan political activity. In all, A.B. Ison’s ad placements against Binay reached P33.83 million.

As for the anti-Marcos ads, the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacanang or CARMMA placed them between Feb. 9 and 29. Compared to the anti-Binay ads, however, their total value is rather measly: P334,278. — pcij, april 2016