One of the most heralded and lauded provisions embodied in our 1987 Philippine Constitution was the inclusion of the party-list system in our fundamental law. Political scholars who had followed the deliberations of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the Constitution had touted it as the most significant act that returned power to the people. If the Edsa People Power had demonstrated to the whole world that the sovereign power resides in the people, not with the authoritarian usurper, the institutionalization of the party-list system ensures the marginalized sectors that comprise the majority of our population of representation in the highest lawmaking body of our government. It has given true meaning to our republican form of government where the voices of all sectors of our society—the workingmen, women, youth, farmers, fisherfolk, and the poor and the powerless—have the chance to be heard.
The party-list system is a constitutional fiat that the government adopts a mechanism to promote proportional representation in the House of Representatives, which by its bigger membership and district participation from across the country is truly the people’s Congress. While anyone can run for and win an elective office, it’s more of an illusion than a fact. The harsh political reality is that all the odds are stacked against a candidate who quixotically challenges a windmill.
The plurality system that determines the winner in our election has its flaws. Sectors or interest groups that have scarce resources and logistics cannot compete with organized and well-funded political parties. Competent and qualified candidates without well-oiled political machinery and without the support of powerful politicians and big businesses are trounced in every election. The members of the 1986 Constitutional Commission were aware of this aberration and decided to remedy it collectively.
The deliberation and approval by the body of the party-list system was one of the highlights of the Committee’s work and was well received by the people. As noted by author Hector S. de Leon in his book, Philippine Constitutional Law Principles and Cases, the framers had agreed that “the basic aim of representative government is to attain the broadest possible representation of all interests in its lawmaking and policy-making body. It becomes necessary to give an opportunity to the various social, economic, cultural, geographical and other sectors of our society, particularly the disadvantaged groups, to have their voices heard. And because they are usually without sufficient funding or political machinery, it becomes incumbent upon the government to extend such opportunities without the need to go through expensive electoral contests…” For his part, as shown on the record of the Senate on the party-list system, Senator Arturo Tolentino said: “Marginalized parties are those which, on their strength as political parties, would not be able to elect congressmen in the different districts because they would have not the number of votes needed in particular districts and if these voters are combined together on a national basis, they may be able to elect even one or two congressmen on the basis of proportional representation.” Thus, instituting the party-list system was a giant leap to truly democratize representation to the House of Representatives.
Legislation is a crucial function of a democratic government. Unless all interest groups are represented in the lawmaking and policy-making process, laws enacted and policies formulated will not truly serve the interests of all. Such laws and policies will mostly benefit the cliques and the elites to which the legislators belong, or beholden. The legislative branch of the government becomes the protector of the vested interests of the rich and the powerful, not the ordinary people. When the marginalized sectors are excluded from the legislative process, their concerns are hardly addressed and their interests are left out. Instead of encouraging them to participate in our democratic processes, we drive them out where they engage in protest actions and vent their ire in the so-called parliament of the streets.
When major political parties backed up by their traditional powerful allies continue to dominate and control our legislature, the needs of the poor will not be getting the priority they deserve. Relevant socio-economic legislation that will uplift the welfare of the disadvantaged will be lost in the legislative mill. Thus, we have every reason to hope that the party-list system will remedy this anomaly in our electoral process and see a limit to power and money politics in electing our representatives to the Lower House.
No one doubts the noble objective of the party-list system. Extending political power to the powerless and the dispossessed such as labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural minorities, women and youth will bring about power-sharing and participatory government. But how do we give flesh and substance to this salutary provision enshrined in our Constitution? As Commissioner Jaime Tadeo had lamented, “our experience has shown that legislation has tended to benefit more the propertied class who constitutes a small minority in our society than the impoverished majority, 70 percent of whom live below the poverty line. This has come about because the rich have managed to dominate and control the legislature… So, the critical question is, how do we ensure ample representation of basic sectors in the legislature so that the laws reflect their needs and aspirations?”
Recently, Kontra Daya, an election watchdog led by Mr. Danilo Arao, has claimed that 70 percent of the party-list groups, or 122 of the 177 registered in this year’s election, are identified with traditional political clans and big business without clear advocacies or causes. Political families directly control 44 of them. Moreover, the backgrounds of their nominees are questionable or totally alien to the group they feign to represent. Some groups are closely connected with the government or the military and incumbent officials have been named as nominees of the groups. These dubious acts make a mockery of an otherwise laudable experiment to attain the broadest participation of our people in government. Greedy political clans resort to party-list mechanisms to further fortify their stranglehold of power in their bailiwicks. The party-list system has become another vehicle to entrench their political dynasties.
Unfortunately, RA 7941, which implements the party-list system, has been found wanting in providing clear and unambiguous provisions to achieve the intent of the law. And to further muddle the issue, in 2013, the Supreme Court had reversed its earlier decision by allowing political parties and groups not representing marginalized sectors to join the party-list election. It’s a serious drawback from a previous ruling that provided a haven for the underprivileged sectors safe from the onslaught of elite politics. The Comelec has even refused to answer the challenge hurled by Kontra Daya. Thus far, the novel experiment of the party-list system has failed. It was a highly hailed concept pregnant with great hopes and expectations when it was introduced in our fundamental law, but 35 years since its conception, the promise of a party-list system has not been delivered. It was lost in interpretation and mangled in implementation.