Comelec allows ‘disqualified’ party-lists to finish their terms

Party-list groups are in a quandary as to the logic behind the ruling of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) disqualifying them.

They also questioned the logic of allowing them to finish their terms when they supposedly do not have any sector to represent.

But after former Comelec Chairman Christian Monsod defended Ako Bicol party-list, the disqualified groups have been gaining the support of citizens.

For instance, the dean of the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance Edna Co has described as “arbitrary” and chaotic the poll body’s move to weed out more than 60 party-list groups from next year’s elections
Co says the party-list system is “not literally” about groups that are marginalized, but about “proportional representation.”

According to Apec party-list Rep. Ponciano Payuyu, most of the party-list groups that have been disqualified by the Comelec now were allowed to run in previous elections. He said his group has been allowed to run under the party-list system since 1998.

“We have hurdled several disqualification cases, since 2001 when we (had) to run to the Supreme Court which ruled in our favor,” Payuyu told reporters during the Ugnayan sa Batasan Media Forum at the House of Representatives yesterday.

Payuyu maintained that which he represented was a group of electricity consumers in Palawan where electricity is scarce.

“Wouldn’t you call them marginalized, underrepresented?” the Apec representative said before a scheduled filing of a certiorari before the Supreme Court yesterday. Payuyu said that party-list groups have been meeting lately to address their current predicament.

“Yes actually we have been constantly meeting together. We were accredited in 2010. Not to mention 1998 when we were accredited, allowed to run, and won, and then again in the succeeding elections we were again qualified, we were again screened and we were again allowed to participate in the election,” the lawmaker said.

He said the Comelec should have barred them from running when they filed for accreditation during the last elections.

Payuyu maintained that the Comelec should have stopped them from attending Congress sessions because they feel very awkward there.

Dean Co explained that “the problem is that such mechanism for choosing among the existing sectors has not been determined, thus the arbitrariness and the seeming chaos of the Comelec’s process of disqualifying party-list groups.”

The public administration expert added “it is difficult for Comelec to cleanse the party-list system without some clear guidelines or criteria that would guide them of the purging or the cleansing. Given such limitation, the Comelec’s decision could be arbitrary.”

At least two groups have complained of the poll body’s flip-flopping and arbitrary decision to disqualify them. The Ako Bicol Party, the frontrunner in the 2010 polls with more than one and a half million votes, was disqualified even if the Comelec already ruled in 2009 that the regional party duly represents the marginalized.

The 1-CARE (1st Consumer’s Alliance for Rural Energy) group, with more than 770,000 votes in the last elections, was also disqualified even if the Supreme Court already made a final decision in February 2011 upholding the party’s accreditation.

Similarly situated is the Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives Party-List, a staunch advocate of consumer ownership of electric cooperatives and lower rates of electricity and principal author of Philippine Cooperative Code of 2008, which was disqualified by the Comelec, despite a Supreme Court’s determination of its fitness and qualification as a party-list organization in Ang Bagong Bayani et al vs Comelec case.

The Comelec, the disqualified party-list groups said, acted beyond its constitutional mandate in ruling that regional parties and rural energy consumers do not represent marginalized groups.

Co pointed out that if the poll body, headed by Chairman Sixto Brillantes, is bent on purging the party-list groups, it should not be done simply based on their “new” definition of marginalized and under-represented.

“The party-list law certainly needs amendment, and such amendment should emanate from the spirit of the Constitution, which is to provide representation for the under-represented,” she said.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima advised the disqualified party-list groups to appeal before the Supreme Court if they would be able to prove grave abuse of discretion on the part of Comelec.

“Resort to the Supreme Court via certiorari is always an available remedy,” explained De Lima, an election lawyer before she joined the government.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. also observed that the Comelec’s disqualification process was like “torture” to the party-list groups, especially to the incumbents.

“I am 100 percent sympathetic with the people who are already here and whenever they ask me for advice, I said the soundest advice I can give is that the Comelec’s ruling is still appealable to the Supreme Court so do whatever you think is proper,” Belmonte said. –Benjamin B. Pulta with By Gerry Baldo, Daily Tribune