Mar files SOCE; mom gave P110 M

MANILA, Philippines – After missing the original deadline, defeated presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II – through representatives – submitted yesterday to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) his statement of contributions and expenditures (SOCE) with a truckload of supporting documents.

A yellow truck carrying 50 boxes containing Roxas’ SOCE documents arrived at the Comelec before noon yesterday, more than a week before the June 30 revised deadline and 14 days after the original June 8 deadline. Yellow was Roxas’ campaign color.

The poll body has drawn flak for allowing the extension of the deadline, as petitioned by Roxas’ Liberal Party (LP).

Daang Matuwid Coalition spokesman Rep. Ibarra Gutierrez submitted the documents to the Comelec’s campaign finance office on Roxas’ behalf.

Based on his SOCE, Roxas spent a total of P487,331,601.36 during the campaign. Of the amount, P18,037,139.01 came from his own pocket.

Roxas’ expenses were mostly for advertisements, accounting for around 83 percent of the total.

He declared having received a total of P469,294,462.35 in contributions, of which P72,394,462.35 came from the LP.

His biggest contributor was his mother, Judy Araneta-Roxas, who donated P110 million in two tranches.

His other contributors were his uncle Jorge Araneta, P70 million; his aunts Maria Fores, P60 million and Ruby Roxas, P10 million ; cousin Jorge Fores, P10 million; real estate magnate Melesa Dy Chua, P10 million; former trade secretary Gregory Domingo, P5 million; Francis Enrico Gutierrez, P40 million; former senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., P5 million; Manuel Luis Carandang Legarda P5 million; and Alfonso Umali of LP, P72.39 million for TV ads.

According to Gutierrez, it took them time to file the SOCE because of the voluminuous documents that they had to scan and attach, like receipts.

“As you can see, those are 50 boxes. We waited for all receipts to be completed and sorted them out according to categories according to Comelec rules. This also explains the (delay in filing),” he said.

He explained they moved for the extension of the SOCE deadline because the original June 8 deadline was not enough for them to submit a complete SOCE.

“We declared every cent that we spent during the sorties, per campaign event. We submit everything. I don’t know if the others were able to do that. It’s up to them to explain,” he added. 

Release ruling ASAP

Incoming speaker of the House of Representatives Pantaleon Alvarez said the Comelec should release its resolution on an LP petition giving Roxas more time to prepare and submit his SOCE.

He said the release of the Comelec ruling “is of utmost importance in order to allow all interested parties to question the legality of the said resolution before the Supreme Court.”

“Right or wrong, there seems to be a public perception that the release of the resolution is being held in abeyance until after the sought-for 14-day extension lapses so it may no longer be questioned before the SC,” Alvarez, who represents the first district of Davao del Norte, said.

“If this is true, the Comelec may end up as a damaged institution as it will be a party to two very serious violations – extending the non-extendible deadline in the filing of SOCEs and depriving the people of the right to question that extension before the SC,” he said.

The lawmaker earlier vowed to question the extension before the SC.

He said president-elect Rodrigo Duterte won via landslide in the last elections precisely because Filipinos want to put a stop to government institutions, like the Comelec, working not to serve the interest of the people but of the powerful like the party of the outgoing administration.

He said the Comelec should have been the first to uphold the SOCE provision of Republic Act 7166, which states that all candidates, winners or losers, must file their SOCEs within 30 days after the elections.

“But by acquiescing to the LP SOCE filing extension, the Comelec became the first to violate RA 7166, as well as its own Comelec Resolution No. 9991, which ruled out late filings and affirmed that the June 8 deadline is ‘final and non-extendible’,” he said.

He said late filing of SOCEs is tantamount to non-filing, violators of which would be barred from assuming the posts they have won through polls.

“We are supposed to be a government of laws and not of men. Having said that, what’s the point of enacting laws if they will not be implemented or, worse, as in the case of the Comelec and RA 7166, the poll body becomes the primary violator of the law it is supposed to uphold and enforce,” Alvarez said.

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim, the head of the poll body’s campaign finance office, has resigned in protest of the Comelec ruling. The poll body voted 4-3 for the extension.

No politics

In Dagupan City, Comelec Commissioner Luie Guia said he hopes the extension of the SOCE filing deadline would be seen “not on political partisan lens but from the lens of campaign finance reform.”

Guia, who is from Binmaley town, Pangasinan, told The STAR, “I would like to believe also that the majority decision (on the grant of extension) meant well. It’s just a difference in perception on how things should have happened.”

He was in Dagupan as guest speaker for commencement exercises at the Pangasinan State University.

But asked whether he thought the move has affected the gains achieved through electoral reforms, Guia said, “Well definitely if there is a momentum, the momentum sort of slowed down at the very least. It did not stop the momentum towards taking campaign finance seriously.”

He said the Comelec would see “how can we recover the losses in momentum.”

He said there would still be opportunity to audit campaign funds based on candidates’ SOCEs.

Guia said the campaign finance office is “committed really to do an earnest, honest-to-goodness and a thorough audit with the help of civil society partners and those who might find campaign finance as an important aspect of election and our democratic reform.

“Campaign finance is not just an electoral issue. It’s not just a component of election. It is a governance issue because through campaign finance disclosure, you’d be able to know who supported a particular candidate,” Guia explained.

“But what we want to encourage is, at the outset, to engender or develop or to encourage a culture of disclosure which must be automatic in disclosing campaign finance information,” he added.

He also said he understands the “frustration and feelings” of Lim.

“I would like to say that I share his frustration to a certain extent because I was also involved in the effort and the advocacy to strengthen the campaign finance regulation regime of the country,” he pointed out.

He noted a law on election campaign finance has been in existence since the 1970s “but it is only in the last six or seven years that the Comelec really found the need to be serious about enforcing campaign finance.”

Filipinos, he said, appear to be not too keen on attaching accountability to campaign contributions.

“Ironically, in other countries, former presidents, former chief executives, former heads of state go to jail because of campaign political finance violations but in our country, we don’t take it seriously,” he maintained.

“It took some time for us to really bring back realization that money in politics is the second important aspect of democratization,” Guia said. – With Paolo Romero, Eva Visperas