2ND NATIONAL ELECTORAL REFORM SUMMIT
The Party-List Reforms Beyond Illusion and Wishful Thinking
Agustin G. Rodriguez, assistant professor, Ateneo de Manila University

The party-list system has had three rounds of implementation. Going onto nine years, one can say that we are witness to the development of a new kind of political representation. It is hailed as the system that could institute certain reforms with regard to the dominance of the elite of our system of representation. With some 20% of the seats in the House of Representatives reserved for the representatives of the marginalized and underrepresented, there are more than 50 members of the House of Representatives who will come from other sectors of society, i.e. sectors other than the traditional elite. As it is conceived today, the party-list system will allow for representatives of the marginalized and underrepresented to have a fighting chance to win seats in Congress. They are given this fighting chance firstly by steering the elections away from personalities to platform by instituting a proportional elections system which orients people to voting for parties with programs and not just for personalities. Secondly, the elections are taken away from the realm of local politics where families and traditional power blocks are able to control elections more effectively. Party-list elections are national and this could be a boon or a bane since national campaigns are also more costly. Considering that the party-list system was designed to open seats for the less wealthy groups in society, the national character of the party-list could be prohibitive for the truly marginalized sectors of society. But this problem may be balanced by the third characteristic of the party-list system, i.e. that this system of representation is supposed to make it easier for smaller and less traditional parties to win seats by setting only a 2% threshold to qualify for a seat. This was meant to make the party-list seats accessible to non-traditional parties, but one must consider that this 2% of the party-list vote translates today to more than 250,000 votes.

Today there are 16 parties that occupy 24 seats. That is barely half of the seats reserved for the party-list. However, there seems to be a progressive growth in the number of people voting for the party-list and a growth, albeit limited, of parties winning seats in Congress. Of course this is good. After all, the spirit of the party-list system aims to increase plurality in Congress. However modest the gain, the party-list system is ensuring an increasing plurality in the House. Today the House has representatives from the indigenous peoples, the popular religious group, and parties composed from the so-called progressive left and traditional left. What we have sitting in Congress today are truly alternative representatives. Despite the fears that the traditional parties would try to dominate the party-list system, there are no groups clearly identified with the traditional political elite occupying party-list seats. Rather, we have groups that are part of a new party-list elite of sorts.

It isn't easy to win a seat in the party-list. Two-hundred-fifty thousand votes won on a national level would mean having the capacity to project oneself before the public eye, a stable supporter base that is loyal, and a tradable electoral commodity that can win the support of national and local politicians. This means having been able to build a working network of voting supporters. Mostly, this is a civil society network that works around certain issues and is not beholden to a political party and local politician. This means also being able to play the electoral horse trading game with local politicians and national political networks. These are certainly not the strong points of truly marginalized groups. However, the institution of the party-list system saw the emergence of large national coalitions of ideological groups or non-ideological, cause-oriented groups form. These so-called civil society groups, which are really national coalitions of NGOs, have been actively organizing the marginalized groups and lobbying for social reforms. Some of these efforts are part of a larger political movement and some are purely efforts at social reform that are not attached to any particular political agenda. These are the groups that have taken on the burden of representing the marginalized and underrepresented in Congress. And they sit in Congress today because there is no other way to win the party-list except through the coalition of interests and resources in large national networks. Otherwise you will not have a large enough electoral base and the politicians won't deal with you. Thus, party-list groups have learned to build large, national coalitions for electoral gain-a phenomenon which on the whole is good for the nation since civil society bickering is not furthering the cause of the people at the margins.

However, given the character of Philippine elections and the party-list elections as well, we must realize that those coming to Congress to represent the marginalized and underrepresented are not themselves marginalized and underrepresented, except perhaps for the women and maybe some who belonged to the labor sector. If one looks at the members of the party-list who have come to Congress, one will see people who are not of the marginalized, although one could argue that their decades of social engagement in their various sectors has given them the mandate and the ability to articulate the concerns of the marginalized. This is, of course, a very valid point for these groups have been the only ones that have worked hard to bring to mainstream political and social discourse the concerns of the margins. However, most often, these articulations are articulated always from a development or political framework which is the agenda of a particular elite group of intellectuals, ideologues or development workers. No doubt, the concerns of the marginalized sectors are finally being articulated in Congress, thanks to the efforts of these party-list groups. But behind their articulation, one can always spot a framework that comes from a civil society or political ideology bias. Thus, instead of electing people who directly represent the concerns of the marginalized and underrepresented, we are really electing groups based on their particular representations of the voices of the marginalized and underrepresented based on their own particular frameworks. If the marginalized are taking the party-list elections seriously, then what we have are representatives who are chosen because they best package the concerns of the margins and present a cohesive framework for solving their problems.

This is not a negative phenomenon in itself. In a representative democracy, groups will really vie for the title of representative and will do this by trying to best package the concerns of the populace. The packaging is done by the party for the people and the people choose the package. In our own brand of the part-list, there of course is the claim that the packaging is influenced by the people themselves since they are consulted often. However, consultation can often end up as education sessions where ideologies or development frameworks are sold. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the agenda of the party-list representatives is really an agenda defined in certain centers of discourse and then later brought to the grassroots so that their constituency can own this agenda.

Although many including the Supreme Court believed that the party-list system was established to promote direct representation for the marginalized, it seems that this is not the way the party-list system will work. As it stands, the party-list system is creating a new system for a civil society elite to engage Congress with their development agenda. This is so because no truly marginalized group can afford to build a network large enough to win a national election. Who represents the marginalized and underrepresented? Large ideological blocks, religious organizations and NGO networks represent the marginalized and underrepresented. This is the new elite that claim to represent the poor. What is the difference between these party-list representatives and the traditional political elite who equally claim to represent the interests of the marginalized? Certainly they do more research. They are clearly more ready with data and studies that can back up their advocacies. They have better consultation mechanisms that involve their constituents even in designing their legislative agenda. And although, like their traditional counterparts, they are also learning to play the horse trading and power play games using their party-list coalition, they are still an alternative kind of politician because they do have development perspectives.

I mention all these points because we have come here today to talk about the amendments to the party-list law. When the campaign for the amendments began with the first term of its implementation, the direction of these amendments leaned toward the continued ban against traditional political parties, the lowering of the threshold in order to allow more seats to be filled, to raise the seat cap to more than three and to clearly define the idea of the marginalized and underrepresented for whom the party-list seats were reserved. These reforms were oriented toward filling the reserved seats, ensuring that traditional party interests do not dominate the party-list system and that only groups with a substantial cause to draw a substantial following gets to win seats in congress. To date, that is still the interest direction that reforms are taking. However, early on, there was a majority but weak voice that worked to make the party-list more open to smaller groups from the truly marginalized. Their advocacy was not taken up in the proposed amendments.

Later, this position was advocated by the Supreme Court in fact when it decided that the party-list system should be opened only to actual members of the marginalized sectors. Despite the desirability of such a scheme, the fact is that the truly marginalized are not organized, not even according to their sectors. And even if they are organized, they are not organized in significant numbers such that they can win a national election. This is because the marginalized have very local and survival concerns that does not make them imagine reforms on a national scale. Thus, even if a party of the truly marginalized comes to fruition, there is still the need for their middle class and upper class brokers who are going to be able to deal with politicians on a national network or regional network scale so that votes will come in. They will need these brokers to be able to design an effective national campaign that will work effectively in the tri-media as well as on the ground. Thus, we have to understand that it is difficult for the marginalized to actually win seats even if we are able to institute reforms that will make it easier for them, unless of course the amendments will remove the threshold altogether and keep the cap low. But even then they will need the help of brokers from the traditional or non-traditional elite.

It seems therefore, that before we can push for reforms that will bring the marginalized into the game, we will need to reform the dynamics of the margins and the whole electoral system. We have to make sure that the marginalized are organized in ways that are effective in engaging the systems of power. Even if we lower the threshold, it will still be the more organized, non-marginalized civil society groups who will win seats over the organized marginalized. Thus, we can really only do so much with the party-list reforms. I believe those proposals that have made it to the last committee report are perhaps the best we can do for now. We only need to be aware that these proposals are meant to strengthen parties that claim to mediate for the margins. Perhaps the real work for genuine representation for the underrepresented and the marginalized is in the broader political party reform movement. Perhaps the best way is to mainstream their representation not only in the party-list but also in the mainstream parties that are able to win their votes most effectively.

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