Clarifying the party-list issue

From the Manila Standard Today (Nov 12): Clarifying the party-list issue

The Supreme Court en banc is scheduled to discuss the issue of the disqualification of the number-one party list group Ako Bicol tomorrow. The decision should clarify the muddled party-list issue. AKB, which garnered more than 1.5 million votes in the 2010 elections, was disqualified by the Commission on Elections. The Comelec’s October 10 resolution cancelled the group’s party-list registration and prevented it from running in the 2013 mid-term elections. The decision of the high court would help clear various issues involving the disqualification not only of AKB but some 60 other party list groups, including others which, like AKB, have sitting members in the current Congress. The party-list confusion was apparent in the hearing called last week by Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III of the Senate committee on electoral reforms. The hearing served to underscore the lack of clear definition of who are “marginalized and underrepresented” and who are allowed to participate in the party-list elections....Brillantes said their only guide was a 2001 Supreme Court decision which said: “The political party, sector, organization or coalition must represent the marginalized and underrepresented groups identified in Section 5 of RA 7941. Majority of its membership should belong to the marginalized and underrepresented”..... University of the Philippine National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG) Dean Edna Co crystallized the issue when she observed that while the Comelec should be lauded for its effort to sift the party-list system to take out the dubious and illegitimate organizations, the cleansing process adopted by Comelec was arbitrary and chaotic....

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/11/12/clarifying-the-party-list-issue/