Party-list group quits

Maharlika Movement, a multisectoral organization, announced yesterday that it has withdrawn from the party-list election, citing "disturbing matters and events which can cause the spirit of this constitutional mandate (to be) eroded through abuse and circumvention."

Maharlika Movement president Ramon Devora, in a letter to Commission on Elections chairman Alfredo Benipayo, said ignorance about the party-list election may be repeated in the May polls, as what happened in 1998.

Former senator Eddie Ilarde, Maharlika’s founding chairman and top nominee, for his part, decried the Comelec’s "indifference" to his call for a massive nationwide information campaign to familiarize and educate the public on the party-list scheme.

Ilarde added: "We regret our decision to withdraw, but we do not wish Maharlika to participate in a so-called democratic process which has started to be tainted by dishonesty and dirty political maneuvers by politicians, ambitious people and vested interests."

He decried Comelec’s approval of organizations which do not qualify to take part in the party-list election, as stipulated in the Constitution. "Even organizations supposedly funded by the government and by foreign grants are candidates," Devora added.