Getting away with a ‘massacre’

The cleansing process being undertaken by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) of existing accredited party-list groups has initially generated wide public support. This most welcome initiative started earlier this year by Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes. In fact, it has gained popular support because it sought to go after the rich and powerful traditional politicians who wanted to use the party-list system as a backdoor entry to Congress.

The cleanup of party-list groups is supposedly also in line with the Comelec’s desire to further enhance the country’s using again of the automated election system in the coming May 2013 midterm elections.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, the Comelec purge of dubious party-list groups has apparently taken the wrong turn. This was when the poll body decided to ram through their purge to include the incumbent party-list groups elected during the last May 2010 presidential elections and whose top nominees are incumbent representatives in the 15th Congress. 

After so much publicity and promise, the poll body’s efforts to weed out bogus party list groups have thus been rendered questionable legally and constitutionally contestable. Sadly, this casts dark clouds of doubt on the independence, impartiality and integrity of the Comelec itself.

Incumbent party-list groups that topped in the May 2010 elections like Ako Bicol was among the first victims of Comelec’s purge, then later the Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives (APEC) and 1st Consumer’s Alliance for Rural Energy Inc. (1CARE). Even if they were previously accredited by the Comelec and given mandate by the people when their party-list groups got elected, they were unceremoniously booted out by the Comelec.

Responding to the challenge of Brillantes, they brought their cases before the Supreme Court (SC) against the Comelec ruling on their disqualifications. Last Nov. 13, the SC issued a status quo ante order in their favor and suspended for now the Comelec ruling until the merits of their petitions are resolved.

The latest casualty of Comelec’s arbitrariness and apparent “abusive” exercise of power was the Butil Farmers Party. When the party-list system was first introduced in 1998, Butil Farmers Party — then known as Luzon Farmer’s Party — was among the first that were accredited by the Comelec and won in the elections. Over the years, Butil’s accreditation has been upheld by Comelec.

Butil Rep. Agapito Guanlao was quoted saying farmer groups are up in arms over this arbitrary decision by the poll body, and rightly so. Over the years, he cited Butil as having consistently served the interest of farmers with several resolutions filed and pushed at the House of Representatives.

When an incumbent party-list consisting of farmer groups is barred from running, it makes one wonder whether Comelec officials are still in their right minds when they ruled that farmer groups and agri-cooperatives are not marginalized sectors.

But now Comelec is saying all of its previous rulings were wrong. Worse, it has ruled that farmers and agri-cooperatives do not form part of the peasants sector, and thus are not marginalized or under-represented.

At no other time in the country’s party-list electoral system history has such craziness been manifested by the poll body. The poll body is not only making a mockery of the party-list system, it is also missing a golden opportunity to cleanse it for real by arbitrarily butchering groups that do represent the marginalized.

The present Comelec leadership’s seemingly utter disregard of the poll body’s own ruling on Butil’s accreditation — and that of other party-list groups that were already given mandate by the Filipino people in past elections — is alarming, to say the least. It sets a dangerous precedent as it opens the system to abuse and arbitrary review, with the interpretation of existing laws now dependent on whoever sits in Comelec.

Asked why other regional groups were allowed to run while it disqualified Ako Bicol, Chairman Brillantes was quoted as saying “Ganyan talaga ang buhay (that’s life).”

Such flippant reply exposes the seeming demeaning view of Brillantes on the peoples’ will and mandate. It shows Chairman Brillantes’ attitude to wash hands, like what Pontius Pilate did, every time he could not come up with a plausible explanation. And now that the Comelec has created such a mess of the party-list system, Chairman Brillantes has thrown to the SC the task to clean up his act.

Hopefully, this is not a portent of things to come on how Brillantes’ Comelec will conduct the May 2013 elections. Otherwise, the SC will be one big garbage dump of this mess churned by the wanton disqualification by Comelec of party-list groups that did not meet the seeming whimsical standards they used to justify their actions. 

Just the other day, 18 more disqualified party-list groups were granted relief in a new SC order placing them within the ambit of a status quo ante order that stops the Comelec from purging these party-list groups from joining next year’s polls.

The new list brought to 33 the number of groups so far covered by the status quo ante order. This was after the SC en banc tackled the petitions of these groups. The SC is expected to come up with the final list of party-list groups that the status quo ante order will cover before going into a month-long Christmas recess when they hold their last session for this year on Tuesday next week.

The status quo ante means the Comelec should include the 33 groups in the list of party-list groups set to be finalized next month. The Comelec has no choice but to include them in the printing of ballots as scheduled on Jan. 20. However, it is no guarantee these disqualified groups can join the May 2013 elections until the SC rules with finality on their petitions.

To date, the Comelec has disqualified a total of 178 out of 289 party-list groups under its accredited list while it has approved 78 and the rest are still pending review.

Obviously, the Comelec has thrown this legal mess to the High Court to clean it up for them. But can Comelec get away with the virtual “massacre” of even legitimate and duly elected party-list groups?