The blurring of Party-List concept

The party-list concept of representation has, of late, caught my attention. I believe we are now the fifth term of its implementation. Rather than the issue getting clear by practice, it has gotten blurred. And the names of the nominees of the different party-list groups have so much to do with my disorientation. At the very least, these names seem to suggest that the concept, at this stage, has to be revisited, if only to achieve the constitutional objective when it was first introduced to our constitution by its main sponsor, then Commissioner Christian Monsod.

Much of the discussion of the Constitutional Commission on the matter of party-list pointed to the representation of the disadvantaged sectors of society. If democracy were to rule our land, those sectors of our social structure that, for absence of connection with powerful political parties, could not hope to send their representatives to the halls of congress, had to be represented. To address their concerns, their voices must be heard. And the best way to ensure that someone who comes from their ranks carries their sentiments, the party-list mechanism is grafted into our fundamental law.

So, we have seen the birth of a number of those groups claiming to belong to the disadvantaged sector. We had, for instance, the PROMDI, at the head of which then was our very own former Gov. Lito Osmeña, now a senatorial aspirant who has my vote. As I understood it, the term apparently arose out of the discriminatory tag assigned by city residents (meaning top bureaucrats and the elites in Manila) to people "from the province" for the latter's seeming innocent ways. The suggestion was that the ways of the "provinciano" were so very differently inferior from those city-bred that the former need to be represented in Congress. I could not disagree.

It is, thus, not surprising that the law eventually implementing the party-list concept of representation had to be careful in its language. It provided that the person to be nominated as a party-list representative must, among other qualifications, be a bonafide member of the party or organization which he seeks to represent.

Indeed, the Supreme Court ruled that the intention of the 1986 Constitutional Commission and of the implementing statute, Republic Act 7941 was to limit participation to parties or organizations representing the "marginalized and underprivileged". The words of the court were very touching. In part, it said that "(t)he party-list system is a social justice tool designed x x x to give more law to the great masses of our people who have less in life". How truly democratic!

But, our great jurists could not have foreseen the bastardization of the concept. While they cherished the idea of giving some chance to those "marginalized and underprivileged" to be heard in the halls of congress, they did not see that, in reality, those who belong to the most powerful sectors of our society would, by reason of their economic and social situation, eventually ease those who have less in life out of their intended representation.

   I have no access to the official list of nominees of party-listed groups now in the records of the Commission on Elections. What I hear from unverified sources has to be validated in ways I am incapable of. But, sometimes word of mouth contains news that can be depended upon. The information may not be official, but, factual, nonetheless. Is it true that the names of Sec. Angelo Reyes, Sec. Jesli Lapus, Congressman Mickey Arroyo are among those listed as nominees?

Assuming that these gentlemen, among other high-strung personalities, are officially listed nominees of some party list groupings, may I ask them if their sectors are "marginalized and underprivileged"? The legitimacy of their alleged groups to be at the edge of our economic and social scheme of things to be marginal is, to say the least, doubtful. If they are not members of any underprivileged group, their being nominees can only be construed as motivated by some sinister ends.

Really, I do not believe that the 1986 Concom imagined of putting in congress powerful individuals thru the party-list concept. And that is why, this theory has got to be revisited.