Democratizing Election through Campaign Finance Reforms

The Philippines has long been considered as a changeless land (Timberman, 1991). It is a land where the same faces and family names have been able to withstand even so-called revolutions. It has also been called a country that is in “permanent crisis” — where the same problems and issues resurface time and again (Bello, 2005). For the longest time, systemic change that bridges the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as between the powerful and marginalized, has evaded the country. More than a century after the 1896 Philippine Revolution that gave birth to an independent Philippine Republic, and almost three decades after the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that restored a rudimentary framework of democracy, Filipinos continue to clamor for both political and social change