"The law hoped to democratize participation in Congress by providing space to groups that ordinarily would find it extremely difficult to get elected."
"The law hoped to democratize participation in Congress by providing space to groups that ordinarily would find it extremely difficult to get elected."
(Part 1)
The Party-List System Act, or Republic Act No. 7941 of 1995 was enacted to promote proportional representation in the election of members of the House of Representatives. This was to enable marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations, and parties to have representation, and thus, voice, in the legislative process.
The law hoped to democratize participation in Congress by providing space to groups that ordinarily would find it extremely difficult to get elected. The law was heralded as an empowering measure to marginalized sectors like women, youth, senior citizens, workers, farmers, etc. Twenty per centum (20 percent) of the total number of the members of the HOR shall come from the party-list (PL) system. A winning PL group may only have the maximum of three (3) sitting representatives.
Initially, only organizations of marginalized sectors and regional parties were allowed to participate in the party-list system. There was even a time when although not explicitly provided by law, only members of the marginalized group the PL sought to represent could become nominees of the said group. Except for the youth sector that still requires nominees to be between the ages of 25 and 30, the rule has since, changed.
The PL law is not without weaknesses. The requirement of garnering at least 2 percent of the total number of votes under the system to win significantly limited the number of seats that PL groups could occupy. There was a time in the first two elections for PL that those who won were less than the mandated 20 percent of HOR seats.
This has since been clarified by an earlier SC ruling. The 2 percent is now used to determine which PL groups are eligible for additional seats. Other groups that did not get 2 percent may still be allocated seats depending on their ranking based on number of votes received.
The cap of three seats per winning PL does not allow for groups to expand its influence in the HOR. No matter how big the groups’ votes are, they can only have three seats. It also does not facilitate coalition-building among kindred groups. The reverse happened. To go around the three seat limit, groups with similar ideologies divided themselves into sectors and ran separately. The Makabayan block is an example of this.
The wording of the law is also unclear. It allows for sectoral organizations, coalitions, regional and national parties to run. Thus, it really is not exclusively for organizations of marginalized sectors. This has caused varied interpretations, even confusion, in terms of which groups are eligible to participate under the system.
The Supreme Court April 2013 decision made a more definitive ruling that radically changed the PL law implementation. The High Court said that, “National parties or organizations and regional parties or organizations do not need to organize along sectoral lines, and do not need to represent any marginalized and unrepresented sector” to qualify to run under the PL system.
While the SC made the rules clearer with this decision, its implications are enormous. This means that ANY group (except those explicitly prohibited by the law like religious groups and those advocating violence) can run under the system for as long as they submit the technical requirements.
This particular ruling opened the floodgates for traditional politicians, powerful political clans, politicians who have finished their terms, and big business to use the system to enter, or beat the term limits of membership to the HOR. The 2016 and more severely, the results of recent midterm elections clearly show this.
Fifty-one (51) PL groups of the 181 that ran won in 2019. Almost half of the PL candidates had nominees from powerful political clans, related to incumbent officials both elected and appointed, or allied with the highest government officials. Surnames like Abaya, Sotto, Nograles, Romulo, De Venecia, Panganiban, Tomawis, Mangudadatu, are just a few of among these nominees. There were even cases when several members of one family were nominees of a single PL group.
A significant number of nominees of the winning groups are of the same class. Some of those who will sit at the HOR are: Jocelyn Tulfo (ACT-CIS), wife of Raffy Tulfo and sister-in-law of former Tourism Secretary Tulfo-Teo; Eddie Villanueva (CIBAC), father of Sen. Joel Villanueva; Duterte allies Carlo Gonzales and Antonio Lopez (Marino); Rudy Caesar and Lira Fariñas (Probinsyano Ako), son and relative of former HOR Majority Leader Rudy Fariñas; Rodolfo Albano (LPGMA), former representative and father of Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III; Alberto Pacquiao (OFW Family Club), brother of Manny Pacquiao; Jericho Nograles (PBA), son of the late Speaker Prospero Nograles and brother of Cabinet Sec. Karlo Nograles; and Jose Padiernos (Galing sa Puso) who finished his term as Nueva Ecija Vice Governor. There are many more like them. Thus, many PL representatives are no longer much different from the usual politician.
It is hard to imagine how these representatives who either belong to powerful political clans, or are allied with the highest officials of this administration, will champion progressive legislative agenda and the interest of marginalized sectors who are supposed to benefit from the party-list system.
A particular case that has caught public attention is that of the Duterte Youth. The group, more known as President Duterte’s defenders won a seat through the party-list system. However, this group has been accused of gaming the system and is the subject of an ongoing case at the Commission on Elections. More on this next week.
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