Partylist System is for the Underrepresented

Except for a few rallies in the NCR and some provinces, February 25, 2025, a significant date in Philippine history as it marks the anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, passed without much fanfare. From where I was seated at my home office, I came across two Memo issuances, one from the private sector announcing it as a non-working holiday while the government Memo declaring it as a working holiday. Which is which?

I had earlier decided to give a break to the employees of one company I head, all of whom come from the poor and underprivileged, the so-called marginalized sector of our society. That day, I was also happy to sponsor a free ESense Relaxing Massage for a school security guard who came pale and tired to the MASAHE parlor at the New JaimEliza with his BP sizzled up to as high as 200! It turned out he had been on a graveyard shift for months. The massage was a natural reliever for him, and ever so grateful, he thanked me profusely for the kind help.

In the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the charter framers called him, the janitors, and utility workers the “underrepresented,” which also included other underrepresented community sectors or groups, like labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural, women, youth, and other such sectors as may be defined by law (except the religious sector). For them, the Constitution created the party-list system to attain the broadest possible representation of all interests in the country’s lawmaking and policy-making body. For the first time, the underrepresented sectors like the poor security guard, the janitor, and their counterparts in the countryside, like the farmers and the IPs, would have the opportunity to have their voices heard, which, for 20 years of the dictatorship, deprived them.

Thus, the Partylist System would allow the underrepresented sectors to compete fairly and squarely for a congressional position. Inside Congress, they should work for legislation to benefit the poor, not the interests of the few privileged classes. The critical question is how to ensure ample representation of basic sectors in the legislature without being bullied, discriminated against, or red-tagged.

That was the original intent of the Partylist System, a crucial mechanism to ensure the underrepresented sectors of our society have a voice in Congress. For the original Constitutional framers, the party-list system was a vital tool of social justice, not just to give more law to the great masses of our people who have less in life, but to empower them to become lawmakers themselves, directly participating in the creation of laws that benefit them.

On March 3, 1995, President Fidel V. Ramos signed Republic Act No. 7941, or the Party-List System Act, into law. It mandated that “the state shall promote proportional representation in the election of representatives to the House of Representatives through a party-list system,” which will enable Filipino citizens belonging to marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations, and parties and who lack well-defined political constituencies to have  20 percent of House of Representatives seats.

However, that framework changed in 2013 with a Supreme Court ruling that the party list is a proportional representation system open to various groups and parties, including the traditional political parties, and not an exercise exclusive to marginalized sectors. This explains why Raffy Tulfo’s ACT-CIS Partylist, which represents OFWs, and the AKO Bicol, which comprises wealthy businessmen, are able to run for elections as Partylists.

Since then, the party list system has become a diluted law, a hodgepodge of vested interests and quasi-political groups from the elite class, business people, retired military officials, and government personnel. The determination of what parties are allowed to participate—who their nominees should be, the allocation of seats for the winning parties—has been controversial since the first party-list election in 1998.

Like Party lists, Probinsyano, 4Ps, Panday FPJ, WIFI, BBM, DUTERTE, and Agimat, named after celebrity stars and partisan politicians, the first elected Partylists came from the progressive sectoral groups like Bayan Muna, Gabriela, ACT Teachers and Kabataan and Akbayan. Regional parties like Ako Bicol, Ako Bisaya, Ako Iloilo, An Waray, and A-Rider rode on their regional origins or branding popularity. Upon closer scrutiny, however, many party lists and their nominees were not representatives of their supposed marginalized sectors but financial backers, recruiters, business people, or adjuncts of the bigger political parties like ML for Mamamayang Liberal (Liberal Party). The classic example of a high-profile politician and businessman who came to represent the lowly security guards all over the country was Mikey Arroyo, the eldest son of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of a party list group he organized and funded in 2010 even if he had not held any batuta in his entire life.

A party list system that allows the participation of trapos, political parties, multimillionaire politicians, and charismatic leaders will only exacerbate the frustrations of the marginalized sectors and defeat the purpose of the original intent of the post-dictatorship Constitution to broaden the representation of the underrepresented and marginalized sectors in policy-making—farmers’ groups. As the regulatory electoral body, the Comelec must intervene to stop this distortion of the party list system, where 156 party-list groups are vying for the 37th lower house seats on May 12, 2025. Reforms are urgently needed to restore the system’s original intent and ensure fair representation.

With proper representation of the underrepresented sectors, legislative measures that “reduce social, economic and political inequalities, and remove cultural inequities by equitably diffusing wealth and political power for the common good” shall be given the highest priority.