Party-list reforms

Thanks to public outrage over massive corruption, it looks like Congress, after four decades, will finally carry out its constitutional mandate and pass an enabling law banning political dynasties.

The reforms, however, should not stop there. The Commission on Elections has been trying to stop the ever worsening bastardization of the party-list system. But the Comelec’s efforts have been stymied by Congress, which passed laws that corrupted the intent of the party list, and the judiciary, which upheld the corruption based on those laws.

At a hearing yesterday of the Senate committee on electoral reforms, Comelec Chairman George Garcia urged lawmakers to pass legislation stopping the last-minute substitution of party-list nominees, which he says has allowed traditional politicians to hijack the system.

To illustrate, Garcia said a party-list group would secure Comelec accreditation by submitting a list of legitimate sectoral nominees. Upon victory, however, all the nominees would resign and give way to traditional politicians.

Garcia also wants a law formalizing the Comelec’s move to cap the number of nominees to 10 per party-list group, and barring substitutions in case of a nominee’s withdrawal.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III has a more sweeping – and long overdue – proposal: he wants to return party-list participation to marginalized sectors, which was the original intent of the system.

Sotto is reviving a proposal he made together with then senator Raul Roco in 1995, which limits party-list representation to 10 sectors: labor, peasants, farmers, fisherfolk, urban poor, indigenous peoples, elderly, persons with disabilities, women and youth.

The party-list system has become a backdoor for political parties and dynasties to expand their presence in the House of Representatives. The constitutional provision expressly prohibiting party-list representation for the religious sector has also been ignored.

With continuing gerrymandering of congressional districts, the number of party-list seats has also grown exponentially over the years, with most groups not even representing any specific sector.

It’s a failed experiment that deserves to be abolished. Short of doing so, the party-list system needs a drastic overhaul.