More than half or some 55.13 percent of party-list organizations seeking House of Representatives seats in the midterm elections in May do not represent marginalized segments of society, according to election watchdog Kontra Daya.
A study released on Wednesday showed that 86 out of the 156 accredited party-list groups represent neither poverty-stricken nor underrepresented sectors.
According to the think tank, forty party-list groups have links to political clans, 25 have links to big businesses, 18 have police or military connections, seven have corruption cases, and 11 have dubious advocacies.
Kontra Daya pointed out that nine party-list groups have sketchy backgrounds, having furnished the Commission on Elections (Comelec) with limited information about themselves, excluding specific details on the nature of their work.
“It is also possible for members of political clans to be listed not in the top three nominees but in the bottom numbers. This should be a reminder to the public to scrutinize all 10 party-list nominees and not just the three,” it warned voters.
Kontra Daya is touted as “a broad campaign of various organizations and individuals, [including the] religious, artists, youth and students, lawyers, IT experts, teachers, government employees, and ordinary Filipinos – who commit themselves to oppose election fraud and other undemocratic practices.”
It can be recalled that the Comelec accredited 43 new party-list groups that will be vying for House seats in the May elections.
Comelec chairman George Garcia earlier said that there would have been about 300 party-list groups participating in the coming polls if the commission approved the 200 new applicants.
As this developed, the Comelec chief said they would issue notices to five senatorial candidates who were found to be consistently violating election rules, and will order them to remove their illegal campaign materials or face disqualification or penalty.
However, Garcia did not name the five senatorial candidates, saying that these national candidates posted illegal election materials in almost all the regions in the country.
“Sanctions await these senatorial candidates and party-list groups should they win in the May 12 polls,” he said.
Garcia noted that concerned senatorial bets violated the allowed size of their campaign materials, as well as the designated poster areas.
“We have already announced the addresses of the candidates’ headquarters so that the letters will be forwarded there,” the poll chief said.
Aspirants and party-list organizations are given three days to remove their illegally posted campaign materials as part of Comelec’s “Oplan Baklas”.
“If they will not remove (these campaign materials) in three days, we will sue them. We will just write them a letter of disqualification due to election offense, one to six years imprisonment,” Garcia said.