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EDITORIAL – Regulating campaign finance

As part of efforts to regulate campaign finance, the Commission on Elections will reportedly release a resolution this coming week, requiring candidates to include talent fees paid to influencers and celebrity endorsers in their statements of contributions and expenditures or SOCE.

Regulating campaign finance has been an uphill battle for the Comelec, with lawmakers resisting the reform measure as strenuously as they have resisted any effort to perform their constitutional mandate of passing an enabling law banning political dynasties. Lawmakers have also resisted efforts to lift or even ease the country’s bank secrecy laws, which are among the world’s most stringent, to boost the campaign against dirty money.

The situation favors wealthy candidates, making it more difficult for challengers with better qualifications but small war chests to break the stranglehold of entrenched dynasties on elective posts and governance. The opaqueness in campaign finance has also engendered corruption, with donors cashing in their chips through sweetheart deals with the government and appointments to public office even for the undeserving.

Rapid technological advances have further complicated the task of the Comelec to monitor campaign spending. In keeping track of talent fees for influencers and celebrity endorsers employed by candidates, the Comelec will need expertise to monitor digital endorsements and follow the money trail in financial transactions.

The opaqueness of campaign finance has made elections in this country one of the top routes for laundering dirty money. Long before Alice Guo managed to become a town mayor and gain enormous wealth from offshore gaming, notorious jueteng lords have successfully used illegal gambling proceeds for a career shift to politics. Notorious smugglers, drug traffickers and members of other organized crime rings have also entered politics, using dirty money to dole out patronage and buy votes.

The Comelec has already forged partnerships with social media platforms and telecommunications service providers to battle fake news and disinformation. It can also collaborate with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and, in certain cases, with the

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