Akbayan tops party list race; Bayan Muna faces delisting
The Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party, which did not land among the front-runners in pre-election surveys, is leading the party list race in the May 12 midterm elections and is poised to get the maximum three seats in the House of Representatives.
Akbayan will get a fresh three-year term for its top three nominees led by human rights lawyer Chel Diokno.
Based on partial and unofficial results as of 12:58 p.m. on Tuesday, with 97.2 percent of election returns transmitted, Akbayan had 2,749,857 votes, or 6.71 percent of the votes cast for party list groups.
Akbayan ranked 57th in the 2022 elections, when it got only 236,226, or 0.64 percent of the votes.
In September, Akbayan filled in the last seat for the 2022 party list race after the Supreme Court affirmed an earlier Comelec decision to cancel An Waray’s party list registration.
Bigger opposition
In a statement on Tuesday, Diokno thanked the outpouring support for Akbayan.
In the incoming Congress, he said, opposition lawmakers will have “a louder voice … and we will use it to forward the causes of the marginalized, and to fight for our sovereignty and democracy.”
Akbayan is a pioneer party list organization in Congress, first winning in 1998 and in all succeeding elections except in 2019.
The last time Akbayan was able to secure the maximum three seats was in the 2004 elections, with Etta Rosales, Mario Aguja and Risa Hontiveros serving in the House.
The group later allied itself with then President Benigno Aquino III and the Liberal Party.
Akbayan is the political base of Hontiveros, the only member of the opposition to win a Senate seat in the 2022 elections.
Assured of seats
Akbayan and five other incumbent party lists are already assured of at least one seat each out of the 63 party list seats up for grabs.
The others are Duterte Youth (with 2,298,760 votes, or 5.61 percent); Tingog (1,787,233 votes, or 4.36 percent); 4PS (1,434,178 votes, or 3.5 percent); ACT-CIS (1,221,669 votes, or 2.98 percent), and Ako Bicol, (1,061,175 votes, or 2.59 percent).
Duterte Youth, ACT-CIS and 4PS were projected by survey firm Pulse Asia to be among the the top performing among the 155 party lists in the 2025 elections.
Based on the initial results, only Akbayan, Duterte Youth, Tingog and 4PS are poised to get three seats. ACT-CIS is expected to get only two.
In the 2022 elections, ACT-CIS, with broadcast journalist Erwin Tulfo as its first nominee, dominated the party list race with getting 2.1 million votes, or 5.7 percent of the votes cast. It was the only party list that won three seats.
New party lists are also poised to get represented in the next Congress.
These include Solid North, which is currently at eighth spot (1.84 percent of the votes), with Abra Rep. Ching Bernos as its first nominee); Trabaho at ninth (1.58 percent), with Supreme Court lawyer Johanne Monich Bautista as its first nominee); PPP at 11th (1.39 percent), whose first nominee Harold James Duterte is a nephew of former President Rodrigo Duterte; Mamamayang Liberal at 14th (1.32 percent), has former Sen. Leila de Lima as its first nominee, and FPJ Panday Bayanihan at 15th (1.29 percent), with Brian Llamanzares, only son of Sen. Grace Poe, as its first nominee.
Around 50 party lists are expected to take House seats in the 20th Congress, which opens in July.
Red-tagging victim
This year’s results were not as good for the Makabayan bloc as only two of its affiliated party list—ACT Teachers (34th, or 0.85 percent) and Kabataan (40th, or 0.75 percent)—are expected to get seats.
Gabriela may lose its current seat as it only ranked 55th, with 253,868 votes, or 0.62 percent of the votes cast.
Bayan Muna, which was among the most popular party lists before the Duterte administration, is at a distant 76th, garnering only 160,369 votes, or 0.39 percent.
It is in danger of being delisted by the Comelec and could not participate in the 2028 general elections for failure to secure a seat in the past two elections—in 2022 and 2025.
In a statement on Tuesday, Bayan Muna blamed its low numbers on the attacks and harassments from the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and the military.
“The vilification, Red-tagging, harassment, fake news, and disinformation campaigns targeted against us only exposed the desperation of those in power to silence the voice of dissent and suppress the will of the marginalized,” it said. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
