Party-list representatives told: No political dynasties

MANILA, Philippines - An election watch group yesterday warned incoming sectoral representatives in Congress against using the party-list system to build political dynasties.

Fr. Joe Dizon of Kontra Daya warned their group would file disqualification cases against those who joined the party-list elections with a mission to expand their families’ political power.

“The system is already bad enough without representatives contracting their term of office in violation of the will of those who elected them,” Dizon said.

Dizon further reminded party-list groups to refrain from entering into term-sharing agreements, which constitutes violation of election laws and the will of the electorate.

He said a party-list representative cannot just contract out his seat in Congress like a business or family venture.

He added a nominee must be elected through a convention after consultation with the sector he seeks to represent, not for something one can give in exchange for money or other benefits.

Dizon cited the case of Senior Citizens party-list group, which was disqualified by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) because of its term-sharing agreement.

Comelec said the term-sharing agreement is in violation of election laws.

The Supreme Court (SC) granted the petition of Senior Citizens asking Comelec to hold the proclamation of the remaining five party-lists until after the question of disqualification of their group is resolved.

Senior Citizens garnered over 600,000 votes in the May 13 elections.

Dizon said the term sharing agreement involves a nominee of the party-list wanting his wife to sit in the remaining term.

“Party-list groups cannot be treated as conjugal property,” he said.

Under Comelec rules, party-list representatives must be nominated through a convention and consultation with the sector. Any changes must be approved through consultation with the sector and not through the transactions of their nominees.

“Any party-list group that seeks only to advance family interests has no bona fide intentions of representing their sector,” Dizon pointed out.

He said several party-list groups that won seats this year have nominees who are related to each other or are from the same family.

Dizon named the OFW Club party-list and the Ang Mata’y Alagaan.

Irregularities

Vice President Jejomar Binay, on the other hand, urged Comelec to look into allegations of electoral fraud committed in the May 13 elections.

He said the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) is verifying such electoral fraud occurring on election day.

“We are hoping and praying that they will look into, they will investigate it and they verify...all the complaints, like the alleged 60-30-10 especially,” Binay said.

“We are ready with all the  complaints. We are verifying if this things really happened and then we will present it to the Comelec,” he said.

According to Binay, UNA is also investigating reports of rampant vote buying and is trying to determine the government agencies involved.

Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, on the other hand, said he would conduct his own random manual audit (RMA) of the last elections in light of reports indicating some discrepancies in the results.

Pimentel said he would review the report of the RMA team that detected the discrepancies that were described by Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes as “variances” in the results of the automated and manual counts.

According to Pimentel, the review of the report and the conduct of his own RMA of at least one precinct would be done “so we can experience first hand the issues during RMA.”

However, with just two session days left before the 15th Congress adjourns, Pimentel said the review would have to be done in the next Congress, which starts July 22.

If ever he does not get the chairmanship of the committee on electoral reform in the 16th Congress, Pimentel said he would just file a resolution for the review of the May 13 election.

Pimentel previously called for an audit of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to determine if they are still usable in the next elections. – With Jose Rodel Clapano, Marvin Sy