Amid powerhouse campaigns, party-list groups try a different tack

While the big guns of established political parties fielding full national slates for the May elections fired their first salvos of the campaign season with full-scale sorties on Tuesday, party-list groups set out on a much simpler grassroots approach, foregoing celebrities and gimmickry. For party-list group Akbayan, mingling with urban poor community folk so as to engage them on discussions of national issues was more important than riding on motorcades and tossing goodies to onlookers. "We do not have much resources for advertising in television and radio as the other parties... but we have 45,000 members that serve as our backbone," Akbayan party-list nominee Walden Bello told GMANews.TV.

Through what it called "heavy ground campaigning," Akbayan mobilized its members nationwide to conduct door-to-door promotion of the party's advocacy. At the start of the campaign period for national posts, Akbayan visited a slum area in Tatalon, Quezon City where they held discussions with residents regarding various issues like the automated elections and the Reproductive Health bill. "Our part has contributed to transforming the language of campaigning from personality-based to issue-based," Bello said. “We want to start the campaign early and fresh. We also want it to open it in a non-traditional way. While others will surely start their campaign by handing out campaign leaflets, pasting walls with posters and/or organizing motorcades, Akbayan wants to start it in the company of the most used and abused sector during elections, the urban poor," he added. For its part, Gabriela Women's party-list took to the streets not aboard gigantic and colorful trucks but on foot. Donning purple shirts—the color associated with women’s rights—Gabriela members jogged from the University of Santo Tomas along España to Mendiola, carrying purple hearts and roses. On the other hand, party-list group Akap Bata trooped to the Commission on Elections headquarters in Intramuros to celebrate the "National Week of Awareness Against Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation." To get across their message about transparency in the government's efforts against child abuse, children dressed in cupid costumes shot "presidential candidates" with arrows. Party-list equals trapo? Bello admitted the grim fact that party-list representation in Congress was slowly being penetrated by traditional politics, or trapo. "That is why we need reforms," Bello said, adding that party-list groups with "personalistic" goals are "fragile and tend not to last long." Since 1998, Akbayan has been able to catapult four representatives to the Lower House: Loretta Ann Rosales, Mario Aguja, Bello himself, and current Liberal Party senatorial aspirant Ana Theresia "Risa" Hontiveros-Baraquel. Many have noticed that some groups vying for party-list representation have carefully been tweaking their names to increase their chances of securing a Congressional seat. (See: Battle for the ballots: Party-lists play name game) Of the 187 accredited party-list groups, 109 groups carried names that start with either the number "1" or the letter "A," in an obvious bid to ensure a place on top of the alphabetical listing on the ballots. (See: 2010 Elections: Partylist groups) Not to be left out, more and more party-list groups have also begun utilizing the power of the Internet to extend their campaigns to the digital realm, for example, through social networking sites. Bello said that through Twitter and Facebook, their supporters get updated on the candidates' whereabouts, scheduled appearances, and even their speeches and platforms. The party-list system was also earlier criticized when two groups led respectively by former General Jovito Palparan and First Gentleman Miguel Arroyo's younger sister Ma. Lourdes Arroyo, both controversial figures, were recognized as legitimate party-list organizations. Palparan's group did not carry any clear advocacy for a specific marginalized group, but openly admitted that it wanted to block the entry of Leftists into government. On the other hand, Ms. Arroyo's group Kasangga purportedly represented balut (duck's egg) vendors, but she herself was no vendor but a scion of a wealthy Visayas clan. —JV, GMANews.TV