SC urged to rule on party-list formula plea before Arroyo’s SONA

MANILA, Philippines - Party-list groups Bayan Muna, A-Teacher and Abono want the Supreme Court to come up with a decision on their petition before President Arroyo’s eight State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday. The petition, which the group filed a year ago, seeks a revision in the high court ruling granting three seats in the House of Representatives solely to the topnotcher in the partly-list race. In an eight-page motion, the petitioners through their counsel, Neri Javier Colmenares, said the early promulgation of the suit will dispel the controversies hounding the party-list system for more than nine years now. “It has been more than a year since the 14th Congress opened on June 30, 2007 and many party-list representatives, who deserve a seat in Congress if the 1987 Constitution will be followed, have not been proclaimed,” Colmenares said in the motion. He said 15 party-list representatives will be able to assume their functions for the remaining two years of their three-year term should the SC ruled favorably on the petition. But should the court deny the petition, Colmenares said these representatives and their constituents would at least be “released from the frustrating limbo they are in for more than a year now.” “The party-list system is for the marginalized and the underrepresented and any decision which affects the number of representatives of the party-list constituencies also affects the very essence of this novel constitutionally mandated system and is, therefore, a very important if not historic landmark decision,” the petitioners said. The formula being used by the Comelec, which was penned by then Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban in a decision of the SC, was supposed to have been implemented in the 2001 and 2004 elections but the Comelec used the “2-4-6” computation instead. Under the “2-4-6” rule, groups that get six percent of votes cast in the party-list elections will get the maximum three seats. Groups that get four percent gain two seats, while those who get two percent will take one seat. However, then Comelec chair Benjamin Abalos said the so-called Panganiban formula would be used in the 2007 polls, which earned for the El Shaddai-backed Buhay party-list three House seats. The SC used the formula in resolving the case of Veterans Federation Party et al. versus Comelec in 2000. Under the Panganiban formula, party-list groups with at least two percent of votes are guaranteed one seat in Congress. The maximum is also three seats. The additional number of seats is computed by dividing each group’s total votes by the number of votes earned by the “first party,” or the top vote-getter in the party-list race. The quotient is then multiplied by the additional number of seats gained by the “first party” beyond the two-percent minimum. - GMANews.TV