EDITORIAL - Party-list farce

Former Cabinet member Angelo Reyes has been disqualified from sitting as party-list congressman representing the transport sector because, according to the Commission on Elections, he has never been engaged in a personal advocacy of transport concerns.

The public will go along with that argument: Reyes has been a former military chief of staff and a Cabinet secretary for defense, the interior, the environment and, in his final reshuffle, for energy. Reyes also briefly went after kidnappers and smugglers, doing too good a job, which led to his transfer. But he was never known for promoting the welfare of the transport sector, until he became a congressional nominee of the party-list group 1-United Transport Koalisyon or 1-UTAK. 

The group stood by its nominee amid challenges to his qualifications, but eventually dumped Reyes when it realized that he was hindering its approval as a group that deserved congressional representation. The move of 1-UTAK might have persuaded the Comelec to disqualify Reyes. Voting 4-3, the Comelec said Reyes did not belong to the marginalized sector that he sought to represent. He is not a transport worker, a transport leader or member of a recognized transport group, the Comelec ruled.

This decision is in keeping with Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2003 on a similar case. In a petition filed by the group Bagong Bayani against the Comelec, the SC ruled that both the party-list group and its nominee must belong to marginalized and underrepresented sectors. The same decision also said the party-list system should be reserved for marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties that lack “well defined constituencies but… could contribute to the formulation and enactment of appropriate legislation that will benefit the nation as a whole.”

Since then this SC ruling, simple as it may seem, has been ignored by the Comelec, which has accredited even groups representing major political parties and religious organizations for the party list. The requirement that party-list nominees themselves must belong to marginalized sectors has been even more blatantly ignored. The best example is the eldest son of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Juan Miguel Arroyo, now a party-list congressman representing security guards. Apart from being surrounded for years by personal bodyguards, how did Mikey Arroyo become a marginalized advocate of the welfare of security guards? Thanks to the Comelec, the party-list system has become a farce.