The Supreme Court has been asked to order the Commission on Elections to proclaim one more seat for the Gabriela Women’s Party-list, over and above the two seats in the House of Representatives that the Comelec already given to the militant group.
In a petition, the Gabriela Women’s party-list chairperson Emerenciana “Emmy” De Jesus , asked the SC to proclaim that it is entitled to one guaranteed seat and two additional seats or one more winning seat under the party-list system.
The group said the Comelec committed grave abuse of discretion when it issued Resolution No.008-16 last May 19 on the party-list groups entitled to a seat in the House.
The petitioner stressed that the assailed resolution deprived it of one additional seat in the party-list representation when it committed a mathematical error in computation that resulted to Gabriela being given only two seats instead of three —or one guaranteed seat and two additional seats.
“Petitioner maintains that the promulgation of the said resolution resulted in its deprivation of one additional seat in the party-list representation. The Comelec promulgated the assailed resolution with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or in excess of jurisdiction in defiance of the formula prescribed by the Honorable Court in the Barangay Association for National Advancement and Transparency [Banat] vs Comelec in 2009,” the petition said.
The militant group argued that under the Rules of Procedures, the Comelec en banc has until June 21 to resolve their motion but until now has failed to do so.
“The subsequent inaction of the Comelec en banc on the pending omnibus motion filed by petitioner until the lapse of the period to which it is required by law to resolve the same, and the consequent substantial injury that resulted therefrom are valid grounds for the Supreme Court to step in to remedy such manifest injustice,” it said.
The petitioner said the poll body made a mathematical error when instead of using 59.5 (Gabriela garnered 4.2245 percent of the total votes X 59.5 less 12 guaranteed seats for party-list groups that garnered at least two percent of the total party-list votes equals to 2.0066375), used 59 in the formula as an expression of the 20 percent Constitutional requirement of the total number of representatives in the Lower House, thereby arriving at 1. 985515 instead of 2.0066375.
According to the petitioner, this results in a deprivation of additional seat that it is entitled to.
“Petitioner maintains that the Comelec is not entitled to use its discretion in removing the 0.5 from the product of the computation for the determination of the 20 percent of party-list seats. Following the rules in mathematical calculations and the Banat vs Comelec case, only the ultimate result is allowed to be rounded off to ensure and to achieve accuracy and precision,” it explained.
The group said the SC has already ruled that the BANAT case is the rules in the determination and ultimate distribution of seats for party-list representation and the poll body should adhere to it.
In the BANAT case, the SC provides for the allocation of the 59 seats for party-list representatives based on the number of votes party-listers garnered before undergoing two rounds of allocation of seats.
In the first round, the party-lists receiving at least two percent of the total votes cast shall be entitled to one guaranteed seat each.
Since 12 party-list groups were able to garner at least two percent of the total number of votes cast, they were given 12 seats and in the second round, the same 12 were given an additional one seat each basedon the whole number of the product between the percentage of their respective votes and the remaining available seats.