Useless system

The COMELEC continues to have a badly damaged reputation simply because most of its collective decisions seem to go beyond ordinary human imagination even if stretched to the limit. Its recent ruling on the Ang Galing Pinoy Party list nominee who will assume a seat in the House of Representatives is the latest example of this kind of decision. By a vote of 4 to 2 with 1 abstention, it ruled that Mikey Arroyo, son of Ex-President GMA and erstwhile Congressman representing the 2nd district of Pampanga, is qualified to sit again in the current Congress as the nominee of this party list group of security guards, drivers and small entrepreneurs.

Our Constitution established the party list system of representation to level the political playing field. It enables Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and under-represented or unrepresented sectors who lack well defined constituencies, to become members of the House of Representatives and thus contribute to the formulation or enactment of appropriate legislations that will benefit them and the nation as a whole.

As held by the Supreme Court in the case of BANAT vs. COMELEC, G.R. 179295, April 21, 2009, “the nominee must also belong to the marginalized and under-represented sector which the party list group seeks to represent”. To “belong” to a party list group simply means to be one of the marginalized or under-represented sectors that include labor, peasant, fisher folk, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, elderly, handicapped, women, youth, veterans, overseas workers and professionals. Such term has no other meaning and should be understood only in its most common and ordinary parlance. As the SC said in BANAT, if the nominee represents the fisher folk, he or she must be a fisher folk, or if the nominee represents the senior citizens, he or she must be a senior citizen. Thus, by no stretch of the imagination can Mikey Arroyo be considered as “belonging” to this party list group of security guards, drivers and small entrepreneurs.

But COMELEC Commissioners Ferrer, Tagle, Velasco and Yusoph over stretched their imagination and interpreted the enabling legislation (RA 7941) quite differently from the plain and clear intent of the Constitution. They did not disqualify Mikey Arroyo as nominee of the Ang Galing Pinoy Party List. They ruled that he need not be a security guard, driver, or small entrepreneur for as long as he has “clearly immersed himself with the hopes and aspirations of the party and the sector it represents” and has affiliated with the party as a member. So, following the four Commissioners, even a Lolo or Lola may now join a party list group representing the youth sector and become its nominee for a seat in Congress. This is the clear import of COMELEC ruling.

Mikey Arroyo and several other nominees of party list groups have shown us, with COMELEC’s acquiescence, that this can be done. And particularly with respect to Mikey Arroyo, by doing so, he has shown us that he can still retain his seat in Congress even if it was his mother who ran and won in the district which he used to, and could still, represent. For the first time in the history of Congress therefore, we will have a mother and her two sons plus a brother-in-law and a sister-in-law sitting together as members of the Lower House. This is quite unique and even amusing indeed. But certainly it could not have been contemplated by our present Constitution especially when it established the party list system of representation and banned political dynasties.

The COMELEC ruling becomes more messy and deplorable because just a week before, it has disqualified Teodorico Haresco and Eugenio Lacson from being nominees of the Ang Kasangga party list group representing small and micro entrepreneurs. In that case, the COMELEC first division including the minority dissenters in this case, Commissioners Sarmiento and Larrazabal, disallowed Haresco and Lacson to become Congressmen. It ruled that the two businessmen with vast business interests and substantial financial holdings are not small, micro-entrepreneurs and therefore cannot be nominees of Ang Kasangga in the Lower House. This ruling is exactly contrary to the Ang Galing Pinoy ruling. With such contrasting ruling on the same issue, the COMELEC’s credibility and reliability as our election arbitrator and guardian of our democratic electoral processes have been more seriously damaged.

This latest COMELEC fiasco likewise brings into focus the utter failure of the party list system of representation in serving the purpose for which it was established and the urgent necessity of scrapping it altogether.

Since the enactment of its enabling law on March 3, 1995, up to now, this system of representation has been used only by the same politicians and political dynasties as a vehicle to retain or regain power and influence. It has not really benefitted the marginalized and under-represented. On the contrary, as shown in the Arroyo and other cases, the ruling political elite has even exploited and used the marginalized sectors to promote their selfish political ambitions.

On the other hand even if the nominees of party list groups who assumed seats in Congress are really marginalized, it is apparent that only their lives and not the lives of their members, have improved. One could see them subsequently living in more affluent homes, having flashy cars clad in signature clothes and bedecked with expensive jewelries like the rest of their colleagues in the Lower House.

It is also very noticeable that not a single vital piece of legislation benefitting the nation has been crafted and sponsored by any of the party list representatives or has been enacted into law. Most of them merely create noises in the halls of Congress or join protest marches in the streets espousing their left leaning ideologies. Indeed the party list system has only been used by former leftists to advance their cause which is obviously not for the common good.

Clearly therefore, the party list system of representation is an utter failure and must be abolished at the earliest and most opportune time when we can have a Cha-cha. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)