EDITORIAL - A flawed system

When the party-list system was introduced in the general elections three years ago, the weaknesses of the system were already noted. A lackluster information campaign by the Commission on Elections left most voters confused about the system until election day, when many simply opted to leave that last line on their ballot blank. There was a long list of candidates’ names to write down on the ballot, from the president down to councilors. To pick a sectoral representative, the voter had to go through another list of nearly 150 organizations.

The result: only a dozen organizations garnered the required two percent of all votes cast nationwide for the party list, and only 13 sectoral re-presentatives made it to Congress. Did anyone learn a lesson from that fiasco? Only certain persons who saw in the new system a path to Congress even if they don’t represent any marginalized sector.

For the party-list elections this year, 162 groups were accredited by the Commission on Elections. With all the wrangling in the Comelec, it was impossible to conduct a decent information campaign about the party-list system, much less define what "marginalized" meant. And so with less than a month before Congress opens, there are still petitions pending in court to disqualify certain groups from the party list, thus preventing the Comelec from proclaiming the winners.

The results have been as dismal as the first time: the Comelec has announced that only 10 of the 162 accredited parties garnered the required number of votes. The 10 are Bayan Muna, Mamamayan Ayaw sa Droga, Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives, Veterans Fe-deration Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition, Farmers Party, Lakas-NUCD-UMDP, Akbayan! Citizen’s Action Party, Citizen’s Battle Against Corruption and the Buhay Hayaan Yumabong.

After seeing the weaknesses of the party list, the nation has ample time before the next elections to implement reforms that will make the system truly representative of marginalized sectors. We’ve had two elections to highlight the flaws of the system, and there’s no excuse to again do nothing to correct the flaws within the next three years.