Villar biggest ad spender–study

A network of socio-civic organizations has identified Sen. Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. as the biggest spender in the 2010 presidential race.

According to Roberto Cadiz, a lawyer and the executive director of Libertas, Villar spent P1.024 billion in three months, from November 1, 2009 to January 31, 2010.

Cadiz also is a convenor of Pera at Pulitika (PAP), a consortium that aims to monitor spending of candidates for president.

PAP is composed of Lawyers League for Liberty (Libertas), Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Consortium for Electoral Reform and Associotion of Schools of Public Administration in the Philippines.

According to Cadiz, they conducted the study by examining advertising rates of media outfits and advertising placements of the contenders in the May 10 polls.

In the study, he said, they discovered that Villar, the standard-bearer of the Nacionalista Party, also recorded the longest airtime over three weeks with 1,450 minutes of advertisements.

The ruling party’s presidential bet, former Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro was found to be the second-biggest spender with P407 million in advertisements.

Teodoro was followed by Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd (P268 million), Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon (P244 million), Bro. Eddie Villanueva (P90 million) and former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada (P84 million).

Cadiz noted that the presidential candidates and the political parties which they belong to can only spend a total of P15 per registered voter or about P750 million based on the 50 million or so registered voters.

“We seek to inform the public about the campaign practices of these leaders, because the way they spend their money can be reflective of how they conduct governance,” he told the weekly press forum Balitaan sa Tinapayan on Sunday.

Cadiz said that “unregulated spending is a way of skewing the electoral process, there is no even playing field if it is left unregulated.”

He warned that because of the huge sums of money the candidates are spending for the elections, there might be a possibility for them to recoup the money they invested in winning the position they desired.

“Then they might be beholden to some vested interests,” Cadiz said.–Immanuel Pastolero and Jan Erick Tutaan, Manila Times