Imee Marcos seeks approval of bill increasing poll spending as COVID-19 pushes election campaigns to go digital

Senator Imee Marcos on Thursday raised the need to enact the bill increasing the limit on election spending as COVID-19 pandemic may force election campaigns to go digital.

In a text message to reporters, Marcos, chair of the Senate committee on electoral reforms, said the herd immunity is “unlikely” to be achieved by the time the  campaign period start early next year.

She added that the pandemic will “constrain” the Commission on Elections to prohibit physical contact and gatherings during the election campaigns.

“There may still be house-to-house campaigning, but no big rallies, with smaller "pulong-pulong” in their stead, based on each LGU’s quarantine status. Overall, personal appearances will be highly restricted and digital, while broadcast, outdoor and other media will assume an inordinate importance in the election,” Marcos pointed out.

“All that media will inevitably raise costs for the candidates, which is why I sponsored a bill on higher campaign expense limits before the end of the last session. If three pesos per voter was a ludicrous basis for calculating the maximum spend of a candidate before, it will be outright lying in 2022 with all the online and broadcast media required during the pandemic!” she added.

In May, the senators decided to defer introducing amendments to Senate Bill 810 or "An Act Increasing the Authorized Expense of Candidates and Political Parties" to give them more time to study the proposal.

This, after Senators Panfilo Lacson and Richard Gordon said the measure will be unimplementable as they note that all politicians might just violate the proposed law.

The bill seeks to increase the allowable campaign spending of presidential and vice presidential candidates to P50 per voter from the current P10.  Independent candidates may spend up to P30.  Political parties, meanwhile, may set aside P30 for each voter, up from P5.

The House of Representatives approved the counterpart bill of SB 810 last June 2020.—AOL, GMA News