Politicians use Facebook ads to bypass regulations
By Juan Dela Cruz

It’s hard to open my Facebook account these days without seeing a Filipino politician’s face plastered on the sidebar offering me to join their fan page. Politicians are spending huge amounts of money online to reach out to tech-savvy Filipinos and get their vote at the upcoming national elections in May 2010.

Government regulators in the meantime have logged on to their computers but they are still figuring out how to use a mouse, in a manner of speaking.

It is election season here in the Philippines and as usual presidential candidates are not only throwing mud at each other but also throwing their cash where they can sway voters’ minds. Taking cue from last year’s statistics indicating 30% of Filipinos today have internet access and 51% of the population has accessed a social networking site, they are now pouring in tons of money to convince these online citizens to their side in the hope that it will give them an edge when all is said and done.

Philippine election laws have strict guidelines when it comes to election expenditures of politicians to “level the playing field” between haves and have-nots aspiring for political office. Candidates for President are only allowed to spend a maximum of 750 million pesos for all types of election related activities. However, these laws only apply to traditional media and street campaigning and have not been fine-tuned to encompass expenditures for online advertising. As a result, politicians are having a field day advertising on Facebook, Friendster and Google without any worries about oversight.

With just over 3 months to go, it is just now that it dawned on election officials that they need to study this internet phenomena and regulate online advertising spending as well. Being composed of septuagenarians, the Commission on Elections of the Philippines is bunch of old watch dogs that rarely even “guard” the house and worse they have stubbornly refused to deal with the emerging reality that the country is in a digital age. Needless to say, the politicians they should have been guarding have probably unloaded millions of pesos before it has even crossed the minds of these regulators.

As a result, the Philippine Election body has promised they will start limiting online political ads by candidates. As to how, no one knows. However, this early the watchdogs have already admitted that they may not be successful in this because election laws do not encompass online activities. That’s the Philippines, for you! Everybody is online yet elections laws are still Stone Age!

(Comments, suggestions and tips: Please email me at 1delacruise at Gmail dot com)