THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) will proclaim today, May 19, the winning party-list groups in last week’s polls.
The party-lists will have 63 sectoral seats, representing 20 percent of the membership of the House of Representatives.
The Comelec, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), has completed tallying the party-list votes, along with the 12-man senatorial contest.
The winning senators were proclaimed on Saturday.
Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said over the weekend the proclamation for party-lists was scheduled today or three days after the tally’s completion, to pave the way for the “complicated” computation in the allocations of 63 party-list seats.
Garcia said the problem cropped up because of varied interpretations owing to the lack of a provision in the Party-List System Act (Republic Act 7941) on how the allocation of seats should be computed.
A total of 155 party-list groups participated in this year’s elections, with the NBOC recording a total of 41,658,790 votes cast for party-lists.
Under RA 7941, party-lists that got at least 2 percent of the total votes cast automatically get one “guaranteed seat.”
Garcia said the Comelec will come up with a resolution regarding the party-list allocations today.
Even if there were only a few groups that met the percentage requirement, Comelec has to fill up all 63 seats allocated for party-lists.
The computation problem particularly involved groups that failed to get the minimum 2 percent.
Comelec spokesman John Rex Laudiangco said the “Carpio formula,” the same formula used during the 2022 polls, was applied this year.
The Carpio formula is a three-stage process laid down by retired Associate Justice Antonio Carpio in 2009.
The first stage concerns distributing “guaranteed seats” to party-lists that got 2 percent of the votes cast.
In the second stage, the groups with required 2 percent are entitled to two additional seats, based on the number of the remaining seats.
A party-list can have a maximum of three representatives in the House.
The process will proceed to the third stage if there are still seats left from the 63 seats quota.
It gives a chance to groups that did not get the minimum 2 percent votes.
One party-list seat is assigned to each of the parties next in rank until all available seats are filled.
Based on the National Certificate of Canvass (NCOC) released by the NBOC, the top five party-list groups are Akbayan with 2,779,621 followed by the Duterte Youth with 2,338,564; Tingog, 1,822,708; 4Ps, 1,469,571; and ACT-CIS (1,239,930).
Rounding up the top 15 parties are: Ako Bicol (1,073,119), Uswag Ilonggo (777,754), Solid North (765,322), Trabaho (709,283), Cibac (593,911), Malasakit@Bayanihan (580,100), Senior Citizens (577,753), PPP (575,762), ML (547,949), and FPJ Panday Bayanihan (538,003).
Joining the top 15 party-list groups in the winning circle are 37 others for a total of 52 parties that will partake of the 63 available sectoral seats.
Aside from the Carpio formula, there is also the “Banat” formula, which the Comelec used in the 2019 elections in allocating party-list seats.
Under the Banat formula, party-lists are ranked from highest to lowest, depending on the number of votes they received in the elections.
There are two rounds of seat allocation. Party-lists that received 2 percent of the votes are guaranteed one seat each.
In the second round, additional seats are allocated proportionally on another formula.
The maximum number of available seats is determined by the total number of allocated seats minus the number of seats already allocated.
In the third round, party-lists that do not meet the 2 percent threshold get a chance to be assigned seats to ensure that the 20 percent quota is met.
Prior to the Banat ruling, the seat allocation was done through the “2, 4 and 6 percent” ruling, meaning that a party-list with 2 percent of the votes is granted one seat, two seats for 4 percent and 3 seats for 6 percent.
In a related development, Election watchdog Kontra Daya said 55.3 percent or 86 out of 155 party-list groups that ran this year do not actually represent the poor, underrepresented or marginalized sector they claim to represent.
Of the 86 flagged party-list groups, 40 are connected to political dynasties, 25 are linked to big business, 18 have police/military connections, 7 have corruption cases, 11 have dubious advocacy, and 9 don’t have sufficient information, Kontra Daya said.
