Race winners submit false poll expenses

Questionable, ridiculous election spending statements from some candidates—Comelec

The incoming Aquino government appears to be starting with the practice of lying, or perjuring itself, based on some of the statements on campaign expenses submitted by both winning and losing candidates that have been found to be highly questionable.

Such statements on election expenses are sworn to by the candidates themselves and duly notarized which makes the issuance of false statements a crime of perjury.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec), through its spokesman James Jimenez, said that some of the statements of contributions and expenditures submitted by winning and losing candidates in the May 10 national and local polls are questionable and the Comelec is now eyeing to tap the examiners from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Commission on Audit (CoA) to help the Comelec in auditing the statements of expenditures and contributions submitted by the candidates in the recently concluded May 10 polls.

“So far, the findings are general… Some of them are outright questionable, or even ridiculous in some cases,” Jimenez stressed.

He added that some of the candidates claimed that their expenses were far less than what one would expect, considering the high rates of print and television advertisements nowadays.

“For example, in the television ad campaign, everyone has a good idea how much a TV ad campaign would cost. But now you see a report that comes in that the cost is less than 65 percent of what is the expected cost, even factoring in all the various discounts that the candidates are supposed to get,” the Comelec official said.

However, Jimenez declined to identify the concerned candidates.

There was no need to identify the candidates who spent hundreds of millions in advertisements, such as President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, who promised an “honest and transparent” government under his presidency.

It will be recalled that just on the TV advertisements, groups and organizations, including the Comelec, checking on the advertising frequencies of presidential and vice presidential candidates, showed that Aquino had exceeded his time limit in ad exposures in ABS-CBN network—on his so-called personal funds, along with his party funds. The same went for Nacionalista Party standard bearer, Manuel “Manny” Villar, who also had exceeded his advertising frequency allowed by the Comelec.

It now appears that Villar had even less expenditure on his ads than Aquino.

Aquino, according to the statement of expenses submitted spent a mere P440 million total campaign expense, while Villar submitted a statement of expenses claiming having spent only P431.5 million.

The report was supposed to represent contributions and “donations” which moreover were not identified.

According to the Comelec spokesman, they would rather tap the services of BIR and CoA than the private sector auditors because they have the number of auditors that they would need to hasten the review of the documents submitted by the politicians.

“We are looking at the possibilities of a partnership with BIR and CoA. BIR because we want to look at the tax angle and with CoA because they have a lot auditors but ultimately these expenditures are made outside of the government. So CoA really has limited jurisdiction. But it is the examiners that we want to tap rather than the agency itself,” Jimenez explained.

He said the commission has reservations in getting the help from the private sector because of accountability issues.

“We’ve talked about that for sometime now, the possibility of getting volunteers, but there are some issues with that. How do you assure that our volunteers can remain accountable despite the fact that they can appear and disappear whenever they like it. So it becomes an issue also,” he added.

Jimenez noted that the purpose of the audit is really to determine if candidates were truthful in the documents they have submitted concerning the money they spent in the last May 10 elections.

“We have to protect them and to a certain extent make sure that they are not necessarily exposed to malicious reporting,” he said.

Earlier, Comelec-Law Department director Ferdinand Rafanan revealed that the poll body does not have the capability or manpower to audit the statements that candidates are required to file under the Fair Elections Act.

Rafanan said that in the past elections, filing of the statement of expenses and contributions are just part of the law but there was really not much concern if the candidates exceeded the limit of the expenses.

In the last may 10 polls, Rafanan said the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and the poll watchdog Pera at Pulitika have volunteered to help the Comelec in auditing. The two groups monitored the candidates’ expenses.

Jimenez, however, clarified that the Comelec would not ignore the reports of private groups but it could not accept them “hook, line and sinker.”

Based on the reports, defeated vice presidential candidate Sen. Mar Roxas appeared, so far, to be the biggest spender among the vice-presidential bets who have already filed their statements with the Comelec.

Other vice presidential candidates who have filed their statements are Bangon Pilipinas’ Perfecto Yasay Jr., Bagumbayan’s Bayani Fernando’ and Nationalista Party’s Loren Legarda.

In the documents that Roxas submitted, he stated that he had spent P279. million and received a contribution of P246 million.

Legarda reported spending P210.2 million and receiving P195.2 million in contribution while Fernando has incurred some P80 million in expenses and got P61 million in contribution.

On the other hand, Yasay said his expenses reached P1.9 million and he received some P1.6 million in contribution.

“In general, there are some assertions (found in the top candidates’ expense statements) that are a little fantastic,” he said.

Nevertheless, he assured that they will be checking whether the claims are true or not.

It can be recalled that the Comelec has approved the proposal of the Akbayan party-list asking for a 15-day extension to file their statements. The original deadline was June 9, but it was extended to June 24.

So far, a number of candidates had filed their contributions and expenses reports. Among them are Aquino,Villar, and Senator-elect Vicente Sotto III, Jimenez said.

Meanwhile, the Comelec is said to be tapping foreign experts to be part of the third party review that will assess and analyze the outcome of the recent May 10 polls.

“We are looking at the possibility of having a multinational committee, meaning to say it won’t be composed only of Filipinos but also composed of international experts,” Jimenez said.

“Normally there’s no third party review for an elections but we are taking that extra measure precisely because of the extraordinary nature of the recently concluded elections,” he added.

Jimenez said they are tapping these international experts instead of the usual poll watchdogs to get a more objective point of view of the process.

“The problem with getting some of the established groups that have been ‘watchdogging’ in the past few months is that it might be difficult to get away from your biases. So we want to make sure that the elections get a fair treatment so we want to look at a different mix of people,’ he said.

“A fresh set of eyes on the process not necessarily the ones that have been watch dogging for the past few months. Why? because the purpose is assessment and not fault finding. We have enough fault finders, we want an objective assessment,” added Jimenez.

Jimenez meantime explained that the third party review and post election evaluation are two different matters.

“The post evaluation is more of an internal matter where we are looking at a more detailed breakdown of what hap-ened…when you are talking of objective third party assessment you will have to as a first step define what your standards are in measuring the elections,” Jimenez said.

AES Watch expressed concern over the “many technical and procedural glitches which tend to put into question the overall validity of Comelec’s claim” that its system worked “perfectly” “and that the poll automation glitches were due mostly to human intervention resulting in procedural errors,” said AES Watch.

AES added that the May 10 voter turnout is way below Comelec’s forecast of 85 percent, and could be the lowest compared with previous presidential elections. –Marie A. Surbano, Daily Tribune