House to prioritize bill seeking higher caps

THE head of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reform vowed yesterday to prioritize a bill, which would allow wouldbe candidates for the 2016 polls to spend more than the maximum allowable campaign expenses.

Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro, panel chair, said it is about time reforms in campaign expenses of candidates be made to make it more realistic and responsive to the dynamics of the changing times.

“Election expenditures reported are usually falsified and a sham. Expenses of candidates were massage in such a way that they only report a minuscule expense during elections,” Castro said.

Castro said if the budget cap on the candidates will be increased, “they will be encouraged to report the truth.”

House Bill 5928 seeks to amend the law putting a cap on campaign expen- ditures of all candidates in national and local elections.

Under the bill, the poll spending cap will be increased to P50 from P10 per registered voter if the candidate is gunning for the presidency.

The limit for vice presidential bets will increase to P35 from P10 while the rest of the candidates will be allowed to spend P30 for each registered voter, up from the current P3.

Castro said political parties may spend P35 for each voter. The present law provides P5 per voter in campaign expenditures.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Andres Bautista support the move to increase the cap in campaign expenditures even as the poll body has placed 1,200 candidates in the 2010 and 2013 elections under probe for alleged overspending.

Early this year, a simi- lar bill was filed by Camarines Sur Rep. Salvio Fortuno, which stressed that the provisions of the Omnibus Election Code for campaign expenditure “are clearly improbable” compared to reality.