Political parties spent in excess of $157 million in ads in the run-up to the September 7 general election in T&T.
This was revealed by president of the Advertising Agencies Association of T&T, Lorraine Rostant, during yesterday’s session of the two-day conference on campaign finance reform at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley told the opening of the conference on Wednesday his Government had the will to propose legislation to deal with the issue before the next general election.
Yesterday, Rostant said her organisation welcomed the need for campaign financing reform to be regulated.
“It is high time for T&T to legislate that which we have been unable or cannot regulate ourselves,” she said.
The AATT represents 16 major advertising agencies in the country.
She said in 2015 “political parties spent conservatively about $45 million with the advertising agencies on print, radio and television ads.”
Rostant said those parties, including the UNC/PP, “spent another $112 million, placing their campaigns in traditional media.”
She said those figures did not include what was spent on social media, political meetings, billboards, jerseys, flyers, giveaways or telemarketing.
“Our 2015 election was an extraordinary one,” she added.
Rostant said the September 7 election date was announced by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on June 12 but the party launched its campaign 103 days before that on March 1.
She said a research company, called Media Insight, which can tract advertising electronically, analysed the quantum of advertising that had been placed.
According to Rostant: “From that first campaign advertisement on March 1 to the last on the Sunday before election day, the UNC/PP beat back the PNM campaign by 2.4 to one, airing 14,500 more radio ads, 1,400 more television ads and publishing 600 more newspaper ads than the PNM.
“One particular theme, called "Kamla Has a Plan", was the most played radio broadcast advertisement. It aired nearly 6,000 times during the campaign.”
She said UNC/PP purchased airtime for events to take place during the last week of the campaign since January of last year.
Another panellist on the topic “The Role of Non-State Actors in the Enforcement of campaign Finance Reform” (the Media, civil society) was former editor Sunity Maharaj, who said there was a need to review definitions and assumptions about the media and corruption because T&T was a country "where corruption is seen as levelling the playing field. That is our history."
Maharaj questioned how could one talk about enforcement of any policy on campaign finance in a country "where people are in Remand Yard, not yet tried, for a period longer than the sentence to which they would be given if found guilty."
She said the media environment “has been significantly altered in the past five years. It has become disaggregated and above all the media was one of the biggest losers in the last election.”