Reviewing party-list system
>> Saturday, May 25, 2019
EDITORIAL
The participation of a
large number of partylist groups, which are controlled by traditional
politicians or large parties in the recently concluded elections, highlights
the need for the incoming Congress to "seriously revisit" the
Partylist System Law, a minority lawmaker at the House of Representatives said
Tuesday.
In a news conference,
Albay 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman stressed that the purpose of the Partylist
law is to “afford the marginalized sectors of having representation in
Congress.”
“I am the principal
author of this law…but that has been bastardized by the Comelec,” he said.
“Even the Supreme Court
has come out with rulings which is not consistent with the spirit of the law,”
Lagman said.
As originally
envisioned, the partylist system was created in the 1987 Constitution with the
aim of giving marginalized sectors or groups, including labor, peasant, urban
poor, indigenous cultural, women, youth, and other such sectors as may be
defined by law (except the religious sector), representation in Congress.
In 1995, Republic Act
7941 or the Party-List Act was enacted in order to define and prescribe the
broad mechanics of this system representation. It limited the system to the
marginalized and the political underclass.
However, a 2013 Supreme
Court decision clarified that the partylist is a system of proportional
representation open to various kinds of groups and parties, and not an exercise
exclusive to marginalized sectors.
Under the new parameters
set by the SC, 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 underrepresented sector to qualify in the
partylist system.
Lagman observed that
this has allowed the participation of large parties and traditional
politicians, as well as the rich and the powerful, to abuse the system.
“So one of the first
things we probably have to do in the 18th Congress is to strengthen the
partylist system and make it consistent with its collegiate intention of
securing the marginalized sectors’ right of having representation in Congress,”
Lagman said.
“And we should follow
the formula of declaring who are the winners. There’s a two percent threshold
in the bill which has not been followed anymore,” he added.
Under the previous
formula, a partylist group must win at least two percent of all the votes cast
in the partylist election to be eligible for a seat in the House.
However, the SC declared
the 2-percent threshold unconstitutional, and gave a seat to a partylist group
that won less than 2 percent of the votes, and one or more additional seats to
a group that polled more than 2 percent.
The High Court ruled,
however, that the total number of partylist representatives must remain at 20
percent of the total number of seats in the House as prescribed by the
Constitution.
There are presently 134
partylist groups -- from the 185 who applied -- that are vying for 59 seats in
Congress.
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