Candidates gunning for the 2022 national and local elections complain of high media advertising rates, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel ‘’Migz’’ F. Zubiri said.

Zubiri revealed this in yesterday’s Senate virtual inquiry into possible violations of Republic Act. 11207 based on Senate Resolution No. 985 filed by Senator.Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III.

Pimentel wants to know if RA 11207, or the Act Providing for Reasonable Rates for Political Advertisements, is being properly implemented.

Zubiri said they received numerous complaints that political advertisements remained expensive.

“What we want here is to push down the rates so you do not have to sell your soul to the devil,’’ he stressed.

‘’Media demands that we, as public servants, are beyond reproach. That we, as public servants, are supposed to be incorruptible. But how are we going to pay for these ads if we do not ask from bigwigs who have money? Then we compromise ourselves,” he explained.

‘’Bringing down the advertising rates for political candidates would allow more players and deserving leaders to enter into the political arena,’’ he said.

“We are trying to push for a cleaner campaign. We are trying to push for better personalities... we want transparency, we want accountability and we want more people to participate in the electoral process. That is the reason why we came up with this law,” he added.

Pimentel said he authored and helped pass the law to address real problems which he saw and experienced when he was campaigning in the last elections.

“We kept the law very simple, simple in the sense that the objective is simply to take advantage or to give discounts to political advertisements because they are not advertisements for commercial goods,’’ he said.

‘’That is the essence of the law. The objective is very simple. We tightened the language of that law to prevent misinterpretation or intentional misapplication of the law. And then the formula is also very clear,” he added.