Make that one vote count

The first week of the official campaign period for the May 13 national elections went on smoothly. Candidates for the local elections will have to wait it out before their own official campaign period starts on March 29.

With nary any untoward incident to the otherwise generally peaceful – but noisy – campaign rallies by senatorial aspirants and their respective political parties, this augurs well for the conduct of the midterm elections. Also allowed to start their respective campaign now are the party-list groups that are elected nationally, too.

Although the Supreme Court (SC) has yet to rule on the fate of 52 party-list groups that it earlier had disqualified, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) went ahead with the printing of the official ballots for the 2013 polls. Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes could no longer wait for the SC to decide on the appeals filed by the groups that the poll body had disqualified for failing to meet the requirements in Republic Act (RA) 7941, or the Party-list Act of 1995.

Naturally, of course, the Comelec has to stick to its schedule of preparations to ensure the holding of credible and clean elections. The Comelec could not afford further complications in its ongoing preparations.

In the meantime, the government-run National Printing Office has been printing the ballots that contain the names of all the candidates from the 33 senatorial aspirants down to the candidates at the local level.

Originally, the Comelec received applications from 165 new groups for accreditation in the May 2013 elections. But the poll body adopted stricter rules on accreditation and went through the screening process with a fine-toothed comb to weed out party-list applicants with dubious backgrounds.

As intended by our Constitution, Congress passed this enabling law on the party-list system in 1995 to ensure that the “marginalized and under-represented” sectors of society are adequately represented in our lawmaking body.

Under our Constitution, a party-list group that can get at least two percent of the total party-list votes will be entitled to one seat in Congress. We had our first election of party-list representatives in 1998.

However, in these past 14 years when we have had four elections, the party-list representatives in Congress have grown in number because they get two or even three seats if they get more than two percent. Due to loopholes in the law, even affluent individuals, families of politicians, and government, police and military officials have managed to become party-list nominees.

While individually they are obviously not marginalized or under-represented, unscrupulous politicians and moneyed individuals are able to go around the law by claiming that they are advocates of the sector that they seek to represent.

That is why the party-list system has earned a bad reputation as “back-door” entry for individuals who could not otherwise win regular congressional seats. In fairness though, certain party-list representatives have been doing good in their job in Congress even if they may not be necessarily poor or marginalized.

As in any other organizations, the bad eggs give the party-list groups the bad reputation. Like any other regular House member, a party-list representative gets the same amount of pork barrel allocations and perks and privileges attached to the office and is, in fact, also called “Congressman.” Therefore, much is also expected from them as party-list representatives.

Brillantes has been vocal in his advocacy to amend the Party-List Act to make it hew closely to the spirit and intent of the Constitution.  Under the existing law, he rued, even those who get below two percent can sit as long as the 57 or 58 seats allotted for party-list in the House of Representatives is not filled under the 2009 method adopted by the previous Comelec.

So pending what the SC rules later on, a total of 123 party-list groups are included in all the ballots. The total includes the 52 disqualified party-list organizations that were able to secure status quo ante orders from the SC. Among them are six party-list groups that have incumbent representatives in the 15th Congress.

Unlike in past elections when party-list groups were arranged in alphanumeric order in the ballot, the Comelec decided to change the format and assigned numbers through drawing of lots. The Comelec raffled off last month the number that each of the 123 party-list groups will have in the ballots.

Based on the raffle conducted by the Comelec, the 1-CARE got the number one slot on the ballots. Ironically, 1-CARE was the second party-list organization disqualified by the Comelec last year. The poll body earlier ruled that there is nothing in the party-list law that identifies electronic consumers as a sector that needs representation in the House of Representatives.

The group, however, managed to secure a status quo ante order from the SC, which then made it eligible for the Comelec raffle. In case the high tribunal upholds the disqualification of a particular party-list group later on, the Comelec has decided that its name will remain in the ballots as printed, but the votes cast for it will not be counted.

Though not disqualified, the Malacañang-backed Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party (Akbayan) landed on the 117th slot, while its rival, the left-leaning Bayan Muna, bagged the 79th slot. The other incumbent party-list groups like Gabriela got the 54th slot, Kabataan 17th, Migrante 96th, and ACT Teachers 49th.

These party-list groups have incumbents in Congress. No wonder protest rallies staged by these party-list groups have become well-funded and organized.

But if there is one legitimate party-list group that deserves representation in Congress is Ang Agrikultura Natin, Isulong (AANI). This organization has been existing for the past 10 years and is composed of real farmers from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. It is only now that it is trying its luck to get a seat in Congress. AANI is listed as No. 19 in the official Comelec ballots.

We, voters, are only allowed to vote for one party-list group. We should make that one vote count.