A newspaper report led off a story with this line: “The list of groups seeking congressional seats gets stranger and more absurd every election season, making the party-list system a joke.”
That line represents a conclusion most Filipinos have formed long long ago. It therefore should not have come as a surprise. Consequently, it should not have merited the banner headline that the newspaper reporting the story gave it.
On the other hand, it could have been the irony that prompted the newspaper to banner the story, in which case the treatment, it must be conceded, was warranted. But what irony? The irony lies, of course, in who made the conclusion.
So let’s go back to the beginning of this article, this time making sure that the proper attribution is made, which we purposely did not do so the first time. This is how the paragraph that led off the story should have been, as originally printed:
“The list of groups seeking congressional seats gets stranger and more absurd every election season, making the party-list system a joke,” according to Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Sixto Brillantes Jr.
Ah there. There is the rub. There is the irony that prompted the newspaper to banner what should have been common knowledge to most Filipinos. What the story is really all about is that, surprise surprise, it is only now that the Comelec is convinced the party-list system is a joke.
What a big joke then has the Comelec become. For years and years, the poll body has been accrediting groups masquerading as marginalized sectors in order to gain entry to Congress by way of the backdoor without ever knowing its leg was being pulled.
But as Manny Pacquiao says in that commercial: “Now you know!” Indeed, now the Comelec knows — sixty years after the bright lights have faded, long since the train carrying the merry company of party-list bootleggers have left the station.
The time to call the party-list system as a joke is long gone. The joke has long staled and has ceased to be funny. But every good joke always deserves another. And so the new joke is on the Comelec. You mean you didn’t know? Well, now you know! As Cebuanos say: “Usapa na!”