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Villar still biggest spender in RP’s ‘most expensive polls’


Presidential candidate Manny Villar, Jr. remains as the biggest spender for television advertisements during the first month of the official campaign period for national posts, according to data from a media research firm. Villar, who is running under the Nacionalista Party (NP) banner, has spent over P120 million from February 9 to March 2 on TV advertisements alone, advocacy group Libertas said, citing figures on political advertisement spending from AGB Nielsen. The figure raises Villar’s total expenditures on political advertisements from November 1 last year to March 2 this year to over P1.3 billion, an amount almost equivalent to the TV ad expenditures of four of his competitors. Deposed President Joseph Estrada (Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino) ranked second with P88 million, followed by Sen. Benigno “Noynoy" Aquino III (Liberal Party) with P87 million and Sen. Richard Gordon (Bagumbayan) with P67.3 million. Administration party bet Gilberto Teodoro Jr. (Lakas-Kampi-CMD) ranked fifth, spending only P60,480 million on TV commercials since the start of the campaign period. Teodoro, however, will rank second to Villar if the amount of money spent on ads from November 1 last year would be taken into account. The former Defense secretary has spent almost half a billion pesos (P472,810,675 million) on TV ads from November 1 last year to March 2 this year, the AGB Nielsen showed. Libertas monitors the amount of ad spending for each candidate based on published rates cards of media outfits. Television advertisements of all five candidates were monitored from various television networks.


Most expensive elections? With more than P2 billion already spent on political advertisements even before the official campaign period started, the upcoming election is turning out to be the “most expensive" one in Philippine history, according to Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) executive director Malou Mangahas. “This has been the most expensive elections ever in the Philippines. Everybody seems to be spending like crazy on advertisements," Mangahas said at the Pera’t Pulitika forum on Thursday. Even presidential aspirant Eddie Villanueva (Bangon Pilipinas) himself admitted that campaign spending for the May polls has already become “exorbitant." “The evidence is very glaring that campaign spending has become exorbitant nowadays," Villanueva said in a separate interview with GMA News. Teodoro, for his part, said most candidates running for the country’s highest post may experience funding problems with the way political spending is going in this year’s elections. “Lahat naman nagkukulang din. You can never have enough," he said in an interview during his sortie in Pasay City on Thursday. Republic Act 7166 or the Synchronized Elections Law mandates that candidates running for president and vice-president should spend only P10 for every registered voter within the official campaign period. With a projected total of 50 million voters in the upcoming polls, candidates are only authorized to spend around P500 million each for their respective campaigns. Rags to riches Villar, the wealthiest among nine presidential aspirants in the May 10 elections, is banking on rags to riches story to win voters. In his TV ads, Villar promotes himself as someone who rose from poverty through hard work, narrating his transformation from an ordinary son of a market vendor to a real estate magnate. On the fourth week of the campaign period, he and his partymates visited Surigao del Norte, one of the poorest provinces in the country with the fifth highest incidence of poverty at 53.5 percent. Villar and his ticket arrived Tuesday morning at Surigao City Airport for the start of his campaign sortie in Region XIII (Caraga). At a press conference, Villar stressed the need for the national government to address the problems and living conditions of the poor of the province, which he said suffers from inadequate infrastructure, agriculture, education and tourism. He vowed, if elected president, to do what is necessary to enable the region to catch up with the national human development index -- improve the people's life expectancy, education and standard of living. Most of the provinces in Region XIII are on the list of the poorest provinces. On the 11th slot is Agusan del Sur, 16th is Surigao del Sur and 44th is Agusan del Norte. The whole province has a total of 1, 327,779 registered voters. - with Amita Legaspi/KBK, GMANews.TV
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