Finally, Mar Roxas has ended up on top of the heap in survey not commissioned by his own Liberal Party, even if it’s just in spending for advertising. But you can always argue that Roxas is not getting his money’s worth for what he spent last year in political ads, seeing as how he still lags behind practically everyone in the public opinion surveys.
Media research agency Nielsen, in a report to its subscribers, estimated that Roxas spent P774,192,000 from January to December last year for television and radio advertising. Roxas’ spending dwarfs the P695,555,000 in ads spent by United Nationalist Alliance standard-bearer Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is followed closely by independent presidential bet Senator Grace Poe, who spent P694,603,000 for the same period.
PDP-Laban candidate and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a late entry into the presidential race, appears to be no slouch in the spending department, either. Duterte came in fourth in the advertising derby, bankrolling ads worth P129,599,000 for the entire year.
That’s a lot of moolah, no matter how you look at it. And because political strategists always advise spending for the “air war” of advertising, the numbers can only be expected to go up before the May 9 elections—especially for candidates like Roxas, who desperately needs to go up in the public opinion surveys.
But as the communications strategist Ado Paglinawan said, apropos of the Nielsen survey, you simply can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. The trouble with the Roxas campaign has never been its lack of resources, of which it seems to have an endless supply; the problem lies in the product itself, which can’t simply be wrapped in the most expensive packaging in order to fly off the shelves.
Despite having all the money that the Aquino administration can throw at him, the best Roxas can place in the public opinion surveys is a distant third. And it would take a lot more than just an endless supply of money to buy advertising space and time to make Roxas a viable candidate by May, given the snail-paced progress of his survey numbers.
But I’m not one to recommend that Roxas or any of the other candidates scale back on their spending for their respective campaigns. Elections in this country have always caused upticks in the overall economy, after all.
And what better way to “consolidate the gains of the Aquino administration,” as the current propaganda buzzword in Malacañang Palace goes, than by perking up the economy through election spending? If you believe that candidates are only giving back to the country what they got from the people, then you can’t begrudge them their contributions to improving the lives of the voters every election year.
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I was being facetious, of course. That’s because the more important question is, who really coughs up money thrown around so liberally by Roxas and the other presidential candidates?
It can’t be their own money that they’re spending. After all, it’s safe to say that no one, not even the most obsessed politician, will spend hundreds of millions or even billions that he or she already has, even if the intention is to attempt to get it all back by any means possible as soon as they assume elective office.
It’s no secret that the bulk of the money spent by candidates comes from contributions from businessmen and other “parties of interest,” who will seek some return on investment, plus a whole lot more, if the candidate they bankrolled wins. The more viable the candidate, the more he or she attracts contributions—except perhaps in the case of candidates who have the support of the government in power itself, as seems to be the case with Roxas.
And there seems to be no way to stop candidates from spending the scandalous amounts of money they do to get elected, especially before the actual campaign period starts a couple of months before the actual elections. If you ask the Commission on Elections, for instance, why it allows candidates to spend so much for advertising in the year prior to the polls, it will simply say that it cannot act on expenditures made before the formal start of the campaign—which is really a cop-out, when you think about it.
Sure, candidates are required to submit a list of how much money they spent for any election, which is supposed to be limited by an antiquated figure per voter multiplied by the entire population. But nobody really bothers losing candidates about their election spending—and election winners are only scrutinized for campaign profligacy if they are out of favor with the government in power.
This is why money and the ability to attract it are always the first requirements of what is adjudged to be a viable candidacy. Forget about competence, integrity or whatever other virtue—these can be imagined in campaign ads, anyway, which require money.
Of course, you can spend a fortune in an election and still not get elected. Not that this fact has never stopped people like Mar Roxas from seeking office.
