By: Consortium for Electoral Reforms

Similar to the air war, Presidential Candidate Manny Villar ranks 1^st in campaign propaganda expenditures among four candidates monitored on the ground level. As the campaign for national candidates kicked off on February 9, 2010 until March 29, 2010, the Pera’t Pulitika-Consortium on Electoral Reforms field data shows that Villar has spent an amount of P 889,378.40 in a monitoring conducted in 10 key cities around the country. He was followed by Noynoy Aquino with P 715,258.50, third is Gibo Teodoro with P 669,240.20 and fourth is Erap Estrada with only P 97,894.90.

Among the propaganda materials that were recorded are posters mostly of plastic material, billboards, pamphlets, stickers, and pocket calendars.

Presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino has the highest amount of expenditure for the 1^st week because of the ads sighted on Public Utility Buses (PUBs) during that period. However, it has been observed that Villar’s level of expenditure soared on the 3^rd week. The sudden change can be traced to the ads observed placed on PUBs during that period, which perhaps is a response to the earlier Aquino PUB ads. But he later maintained modest level of expenses for weeks 4 and 5.

Teodoro on the other hand was observed to increase its materials on weeks 3 and 4 when the green color started to dominate the roads of Quezon City. Meanwhile, Erap, maintained a pattern of spending less in propaganda materials.

Election propaganda materials are the ones utilized by the candidates to promote their candidacy on the ground level. Its expenditures vis-à-vis the size and quantity per area are monitored on a weekly basis by the volunteers of the PAP-CER group. The monitoring work records the changes of the propaganda materials posted or hung in major streets in every key city every three days.

PAP-CER has trained and deployed local volunteers across the country to monitor the expenditure on the ground. The key cities are the following: Baguio City, San Fernando in Pampanga, Quezon City, Lucena City, Legazpi City, Cebu City, Iloilo City, Cagayan de Oro City, Davao City, and Zamboanga City.

The group also focused its efforts to monitor four candidates who are deemed to have the capability to spend at the maximum – Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino, Joseph “Erap” Estrada, Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro, and Manuel “Manny” Villar.

The Fair Elections Act of 2001 provides for the use of propaganda materials and has identified the lawful items, however, solely for expenditure monitoring purposes, PAP-CER focused on accounting all items that can be receipted, regardless if the material used is lawful or not (eg. Outside the allowable size).

The PAP-CER field monitoring group is also monitoring the conduct of Public Rallies on the same key cities. The group will continue to monitor on the ground until before the cooling period on May 8, 2010.