MANILA, Philippines – The campaign period for party-list groups vying for seats in the 2025 elections begins on Tuesday, February 11.
Alongside senatorial candidates, party-list groups kick off their campaign that will last until May 10, or two days before the May 12 polls. While the focus tends to shift to the Senate race, especially given the intense political rivalry between the Duterte and Marcos factions, the importance of the party-list election should not be overlooked as it is no less significant in shaping the future of the legislature.
At least 155 groups are joining the campaign trail to grab at least one of the 63 seats reserved for party-list representatives in the incoming 20th Congress. These make up 20% of the total membership of the House of Representatives, as mandated by Republic Act No. 7941 or the Party-List Act.
Voting for a party-list group in the Philippines is different from voting for individual candidates. For the party list, the voter chooses a party and not its nominees. The voter can only choose one party.
At the end of the polls, the Commission on Elections will total all the votes cast for all party-list groups then compute the equivalent of 2% of the total. For every 2% that a party gets, its nominee gets a seat at the House of Representatives. A party can get a maximum of three seats.
Each winning party-list representative may serve a maximum of three consecutive terms, as nominated by his or her respective elected party or organization. These representatives are elected from sectoral parties, sectoral organizations, or political parties.
Who is the party-list system for anyway?
One issue that has continued to shape the party-list race is the involvement of political dynasties and former or incumbent officials. Many of the nominees have ties to powerful political families.
This highlights the ever-growing influence of political dynasties and the use of the party-list system as yet another vehicle for political elites to maintain their hold on power. An analysis by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism found that 36 out of the 55 party-list groups in the current 19th Congress have at least one nominee from a political family.
Assistant professor of political science Crisline Torres-Pilapil of the University of the Philippines Diliman said that politicians have become “more brazen” since the 2013 decision of the Supreme Court that “opened the party-list system not only to sectoral but also to national and regional parties as originally intended by the constitutional framers.”
“The participation of these incumbent or former officials and the usual dynasties is expected because many of them are basically ‘political entrepreneurs,’ always on the hunt for elective posts that they could raid,” she said.
This situation also raises the crucial question: who exactly is the party-list system meant for?
While it’s easy to assume it should be reserved exclusively for economically-marginalized sectors, it’s important to remember that the party-list system was not originally designed to allocate all seats exclusively to these groups.
Pilapil explained that framers of the 1987 Philippine Constitution introduced the system as a “reform measure to address the elite-dominated and winner-takes-all nature of the single-member district (SMD) electoral system that had marginalized smaller parties and groups since the American period.”
“A corollary goal is that with initial gains and experience of these small parties or groups in a proportional-based electoral system, they would be encouraged to coalesce to form larger parties or organizations,” she said.
“Thus, to the extent that the term ‘marginalized’ was used in the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Philippine Constitution, it was understood as electoral marginalization, which includes the poor but not confined only to them,” Pilapil added.
However, over the years, this original intent has become unclear and distorted.
In 2001, the SC released a decision that effectively said the party-list system should cater to marginalized sectors in the economic sense, adding that it is “such one tool intended to benefit those who have less in life” and “gives the great masses of our people genuine hope and genuine power.”
This decision became the “defining characteristics” of the Philippine party-list system until another High Court decision more than a decade later. In 2013, the High Court ruled that national 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 join the race.
“It is this misconception about the original intent of the party list that the public must unlearn,” Pilapil said. “With such a clarification, hopefully, the public may appreciate the value of casting their vote for a party-list group that will truly represent and fight for the interests of the public and not that of some dynastic or personalistic interests.”
In the case of sectoral parties and organizations, their nominees “must either belong to their respective sectors or must have a track record of advocacy,” according to guidelines issued by the SC in 2013. This, however, has not stopped dubious individuals from getting House seats as sectoral representatives.
To truly prevent “political entrepreneurs” from further dominating the party-list system is to go back to the “flawed institutional design” of the Party-List Act. These flaws, according to Pilapil, include the absence of an electoral formula for seat allocation, the “ridiculously low ceiling” of three seats, and the low threshold that leads to party fragmentation in the legislature.
“One way to address the problem of the party list being sidelined in the national discourse on elections is to make the party-list system a viable proportional representation-based electoral system,” she said, adding that this can be done by “instituting reforms to address the flaws” in the party-list system itself.
But will legislators who may have benefited from the “flaws” help fix it, is the question. – Rappler.com