The folly of the party-list system

The current to-do about what constitutes a genuine party-list group or representative is another instance of the law of unintended consequences operating, which seems to take its toll disproportionately on human beings armed only with good intentions and nothing but.

The current flap has the Left and the political opposition—once again bedfellows, though perhaps no longer strangely so—leading the charge against supposed abuses by Malacañang of the party-list mechanism instituted by the haplessly well-intentioned framers of the 1987 Constitution.

These guardians of political correctness insist that the Palace has no business backing party-list groups because the latter are supposed to represent only “the poor, the marginalized, and the under-represented”.

To begin with, the people purported to be represented by party list groups aren’t even properly defined in the Constitutional language that creates a whole new class of representation for them. The law simply refers to them as “labor, peasants, urban poor…(etc.)… and such other sectors as may be provided by law”.

This isn’t a definition; this is mere taxonomy, and with a wide-open back door at that. This failure of the Charter framers to properly define—with logical boundaries and coherent substance within—such words as “marginalized” was a colossal drafting oversight that even first-year law students are taught to avoid.

For example, who could be more marginalized and under-represented today than, say, the loyalists of the late President Marcos? They’ve certainly come in for their share of post-Edsa bludgeoning. And if you consider the total Ilocano population as their potential electoral base, they would certainly qualify for the minimum 2 percent threshold per seat, at the very least. So why can’t they be a party list group?

Defining suffrage privileges according to age, citizenship, or residence is straightforward; there can be no debate about what the criteria mean. By comparison, redefining suffrage based on additional so-called criteria like “marginalization” can only be an endless exercise in circularity.

“Ah, but we’ll know the marginalized when we see them!” This is effectively how the circularity is supposed to be broken—according to spokesmen from the unelected and amorphous grouping called “civil society”—relying on their own mysterious divinations.

These same diviners also harrumph that nobody can properly represent a “marginalized” sector through the party list unless he or she belongs to that same sector. Thus, they would exclude someone like Rep. Mikey Arroyo—who wants to represent security guards—or former Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, who’s been invited by various transport groups to represent them.

But why should security guards be deprived of the services of someone with Mikey’s experience and—yes—family connections? Likewise, why not Angie Reyes for transport—or, for that matter, anyone else whose proximity to Malacañang can benefit the sector being represented?

I think it was Commission on Elections chairman Jose Melo who asked those critics—I guess with tongue in cheek—whether it would thus be necessary for the mentally retarded (a most incorrect term, by the way; the preferred label is “developmentally challenged”) to be represented by someone who is retarded too.

Unfortunately, the good chairman caved in too early, with a new Comelec ruling now requiring that party list representatives should in fact belong to the sector they represent. Thus he deprived wiseacres of the opportunity to remind him that you don’t even need a party list for the mentally retarded to find more than enough of their representatives already in Congress.

In fact, the exclusivity argument cuts both ways and cuts even farther. To be consistent, voters who don’t belong to a given sector shouldn’t be allowed to select the party list in that sector, just as we prohibit non-residents from voting within a given district. Why should non-educators vote on the party list for educators? Or non-leftists vote for any of the Leftist groups?

This is what happens when we try to use the letter of the law to make up for our own deficiencies—or worse, to achieve some kind of social engineering objective. If we want fairer representation, we can instead work to improve the quality of Comelec officials. If we want better representation, let’s sponsor more political education.

But let’s not tinker with the bedrock principles of republican democracy. One of them requires each and every one of us—no matter our individual circumstances—to enjoy equal standing as individual citizens. This can only be compromised when we encourage some among us to think of themselves as being owed more under the law—in this case, owed more representation.

Former UP Law Dean Raul Pangalangan—my favorite future chief justice—writing about party lists last year, finally threw up his hands and admitted: “At some point… we should reconsider the endless tinkering with the rules. The law is not the only tool for political reform…[It is] in fact a rather primitive and cumbersome instrument…It’s like using a butcher’s knife to perform the work of a surgeon’s scalpel.”

From the country’s only Harvard Law PhD, very well said, indeed. –Gary Olivar, Manila Standard Today

gbolivar1952@gmail.com.