Selective

Tomorrow morning, the Senate economic affairs committee will conduct yet another public hearing. This time the subject of the hearing will be the various infomercials airing on television extolling the achievements of various government departments.

Summoned to the hearing are: Vice-President and housing czar Noli de Castro; Finance Secretary Margarito Teves; Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro; Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno; Health Secretary Francisco Duque III; Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane; Education Secretary Jesli Lapus; Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman; Pagcor Chairman Ephraim Genuino; Tesda Chairman Augusto Syjuco; MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando and Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay.

This is a large, star-studded cast — if they all come to the feast and subject themselves to the tender mercies of Senator Miriam Santiago. Most likely, these officials will send their underlings to explain the predictable technical questions that will be posed.

Much of these questions, after all, have been properly aired and duly dealt with.

It is valid for government agencies to try and keep the public informed of their programs. For this task, meager amounts are available in the budgets of the various public agencies. These amounts are nothing compared to the massive funds spent by a couple of Sen. Santiago’s colleagues in advertising themselves.

There is, of course, a thin and permeable line between projecting the accomplishments of a public agency and projecting those who lead them. But it is a line that may be validly drawn nevertheless.

One may validly suspect that the infomercials serve the incidental purpose of raising the name-recall of the heads of agencies. Only the most naïve will miss seeing the relationship between the proliferation of infomercials and the prospect of these heads of agencies seeking elective office next year.

About that incidental purpose, sadly, nothing could be done. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez reiterates that unless a person has filed a certificate of candidacy, any ad promoting his person or advocacy cannot be considered premature campaigning.

That is a large loophole in our election laws made larger by the fact that our electoral culture is personality-centered rather than party-based, popularity driven rather than policy-oriented. But it is a loophole that cannot be closed except at an intolerable cost.

We cannot prevent public agencies from informing the public of their programs or private individuals from promoting their advocacy on the grounds that they are potential candidates a year down the road. That will be absurd.

Unless we make all elections local, unless we build a party-based electoral politics and unless we build a new culture of representative democracy driven by policy-defined constituencies, we are doomed to the politics of popularity. Within the terms of such politics, those aspiring for elective posts will use the loophole to the fullest extent. It is, unfortunately, the only way to matter in the electoral arena.

Any effort to close that loophole will be futile. We cannot load the Comelec with the impossible mission of divining who will be candidates a year hence and enforcing on them an unenforceable advertising ban. The peril of selective enforcement is even more problematic in this regard.

There is something procedurally odd in the fact that it is the Senate economic affairs that is conducting the hearing on this matter of alleged premature campaigning. The only explanation for that oddity is that the economic affairs committee is controlled by Sen. Santiago.

Her other committee, the foreign affairs committee, will be even more distant from the subject. Her chairmanship of the foreign affairs committee has already proven useful for the good senator, having been invited on the basis of her chairmanship of that committee to nearly all the presidential missions abroad.

Even graver, there is something politically odd in the hearing called for tomorrow: if the concern here is premature campaigning, why exempt from those summoned to appear the two senators who are so obviously prematurely campaigning.

According to advertising industry estimates, Sen. Manuel Villar and Sen. Manuel Roxas have easily spent well over a billion pesos in paid media placements. Everything spent by the public agencies in those infomercials that might incidentally promote their respective heads pales in comparison to the awesome spending by these two obvious presidential aspirants.

By exempting her two colleagues in the Senate from this inquiry, Sen. Santiago becomes vulnerable to the charge of being selective. Or of being utterly blind to the gross disproportion in ad spending between her two colleagues on one hand and the entire executive branch on the other.

Besides, the public agencies have at least the excuse of public information for what they do. Her two colleagues spending hundreds of millions on blatant self-promotion do not even have that thin cover.

Of course, one would be completely naïve to miss the personal agenda inspiring Sen. Santiago to call a hearing on this entirely uninspiring matter. This is an opportunity for her to call Ronaldo Puno to the rug and publicly humiliate him. We all know she blames Puno for her defeat to Fidel Ramos in the 1992 presidential elections and has never forgiven him for that.

The strictly personal agenda inspiring Santiago will make this hearing an utter waste of time. If Puno does not materialize to given Santiago the opportunity to berate him in public, this hearing will be completely academic. It might have been more fruitful if Santiago chose to look at the larger picture — rather than her petty obsessions — and interrogate the general failings of our electoral culture instead. –Alex Magno (The Philippine Star)