Out of control

It’s dagdag-bawas, circa 2012: the Commission on Elections (Comelec) disqualifies four party-list organizations (as it should have done a long time ago) for not representing any marginalized sector. How can an entire region – in this case Bicol, which Ako Bicol claims to represent – be a marginalized sector?

On the same day, however, the Comelec adds two new party-list congressmen to the already bloated roster of the House of Representatives.

Why does one of the two look out of place in any marginalized sector? Because Wesley Gatchalian happens to be the brother of three-term Valenzuela Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian and Valenzuela City Congressman Rex, who is seeking to replace Sherwin as mayor in 2013.

Wesley’s party-list group Alay Buhay claims to represent small businessmen. You have to redefine “small” to make Alay Buhay represent the Wellex group of Wesley’s businessman father William, but maybe Wellex is not included in the group’s avowed mission.

The other newly accredited party-list congressman is Zenaida Maranan of 1-United Transport Koalisyon (1-UTAK), the group that once picked the late defense chief Angelo Reyes as its nominee to Congress.

Presumably, the two newly proclaimed congressmen would be receiving back wages from taxpayers, who are already burdened with the upkeep of 285 other members of the House of Representatives.

The disqualified party-list congressmen, meanwhile, have been allowed by the Comelec to finish their term. The Comelec said Ako Bicol was accredited as a political party, not a party-list group. So why was it allowed to be part of the party-list vote, and to have three congressional seats? If the group didn’t qualify for the party-list system in the first place, what term is there to finish? They should refund all public funds they received from Day One.

Jurisprudence on party-list representation has been in existence for over a decade. On June 26, 2001, the Supreme Court (SC), ruling on a case filed by Bagong Bayani against the Comelec, declared that party-list representation should be limited to those “who belong to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties… who lack well-defined constituencies…”

As noted in an article by the author or ponente of the ruling, SC Associate Justice (later Chief Justice) Artemio Panganiban, the court clearly stated, “not only the candidate party or organization must represent marginalized and underrepresented sectors, so must its nominees.”

Each nominee, the SC ruling declared, must also “belong to marginalized and underrepresented sectors.” Panganiban, citing the ruling, observed, “Surely the interest of the youth cannot be fully represented by a retiree; neither can those of the urban poor or working class, by an industrialist.”

The role of the Comelec, the ruling stated, “is to see to it that only those Filipinos who are marginalized and underrepresented become members of Congress under the paty-list system, Filipino style.”

Panganiban wrote his comments in 2010, when he was criticizing the accreditation of Mikey Arroyo as party-list nominee of Ang Galing Pinoy, a group supposedly representing security guards.

How can a former president’s son belong to a marginalized sector? Last August, the Comelec announced that Ang Galing Pinoy would be disqualified from the party-list race in 2013. Mikey Arroyo says he’s no longer interested anyway.

That will leave only two Arroyos – if they are reelected – in the next Congress. Until early this year, there were four in the House: Mikey and his brother Dato, representing gerrymandered Camarines Sur, their mother Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo representing her late father’s home province of Pampanga, and her brother-in-law, Negros Occidental Rep. Ignacio Arroyo Jr. Iggy Arroyo died last January.

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When former presidents are setting the example in building political dynasties, you can understand why lesser known politicians want to do the same.

We have to coin a new word for what’s happening to our political system. A dynasty refers to a succession of rulers from the same family, with political positions passed on from one generation to the next. In our case, several members of the family – siblings, parents and children, uncles and cousins – want to hold political office all at the same time, and as we have seen, even simultaneously in the same chamber.

This disgraceful development is eroding the system of checks and balances and weakening our democratic system. A city council, for example, is supposed to guard against abuses of the mayor. The council is headed by the vice mayor. What happens when the vice mayor is the child of the mayor?

It’s shameless greed for political power and entitlements. Some politicians who still have the decency to be stung by accusations of being kapalmuks say they leave it up to the voters to decide their fate. Sticks and stones may break their bones, but being called thick-faced, the literal translation of kapalmuks, will not hurt them.

And they are, sadly, right. We keep voting for the shameless, and we get the government we deserve.

If the same energy applied to the protest against the cybercrime law would be used in a shame campaign against greed for political power, the country would be a better place… that is, if the politicians are capable of shame.

As things stand, the shamelessness is out of control – whether in the party-list system or in the other political races.

There oughta be a law, but Congress is packed with the shameless.