Liberal Party President and Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan said that they also felt resentful to ABS-CBN because their advertisements for the last 10 days of the 2019 senatorial campaign was not aired by the said broadcasting network.
During the Senate hearing on the ABS-CBN franchise, Pangilinan is one of the senators who recounted their bad experience with the rules and regulations for political ads.
According to him, in the last ten days of the election, ABS-CBN fails to air millions of pesos worth of ads to promote the opposition senatorial bets Otso Diretso.
Pangilinan pointed out the importance of the said ads, saying that if those commercials were aired, the result of the election may change.
“Milyong pisong halaga ng ads ang hindi na air dahil nga sa proseso, so kung iisipin ng ating mga kababayan na may bias siguro, eh walang bias samin,” Pangilinan said.
“Critical sa amin yung huling sampung araw na dapat sana’y na air yung ads na yun at baka sakaling nag iba ang resulta nung halalan, ngunit wala po kaming magawa, may hinanakit rin kami pero hindi natin dadalhin natin sa usapin na mawawalan ng trabaho yung 11,000 mga kababayan natin,” he added.
It can be remembered that all the candidates of Otso Diretso fail to win the senatorial elections.
Recently, ABS-CBN CEO Karlo Katigbak explained that because of what happened to President Duterte’s advertisement in 2016, they tried to improve their rules and regulations to avoid having problems with candidates in the future.