Palace defends Duterte’s poll spending

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang denied yesterday that President Duterte violated election spending rules in 2016 as it dismissed Kontra Daya’s allegation as mere speculation.

“(The President) has not violated any law and he will not. He enforces the law. He is number one among those who are against violators. How can he violate the law?” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a chance interview.

Panelo said Duterte is open to an investigation on the allegation that he overspent during the campaign.

“Every time he’s being accused, he would say, file charges if what you are saying is true,” Panelo said.

Panelo said some of the money spent by the Duterte campaign team for commercials were donations.

“When you’re running for any position, there are friends and supporters who contribute… who pay for your advertisements – they like him,” the Palace official said.

The poll watchdog Kontra Daya urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday to investigate Duterte’s campaign spending in the 2016 polls, saying it now appears that he is the “bigger fish to fry” based on the commercial spots his camp bought from ABS-CBN network.

In a statement, Kontra Daya convenor Danilo Arao noted that at the Senate hearing on the franchise of ABS-CBN last Feb. 24, it appeared that Duterte’s camp had bought a total of P182 million in the network’s commercial spots during the presidential polls, which was reportedly split into P117 million for national ads and P65 million for local ads.

“About P7 million worth of local ads were unaired, which means that the Duterte camp spent roughly P175 million for ABS-CBN alone,” he added.

According to Arao, Duterte declared in his Statement of Contributions and Expenditures a total campaign spending of P371.4 million. Of this, P110 million were spent for campaign ads.

“Comparing this information to the one provided by ABS-CBN, Duterte is likely to have overspent. Does this mean that Duterte and his supporters four years ago had so much faith on ABS-CBN that it supposedly decided to pay the latter about 47.2 percent of its total election budget?” he claimed as he described the revelation as “more shocking.” – With Sheila Crisostomo