53 party list winners proclaimed today
The Commission on Elections (Comelec), sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), is set to proclaim today at least 53 of the party list groups which garnered the most number of votes during the May 12 midterm elections.
The final number to be proclaimed as well as the number of seats to be allocated to them in the House of Representatives will ultimately depend on the poll body’s application of the 2009 Supreme Court ruling, as well as its decisions on pending disqualification cases.
Today’s party list proclamation, which takes place seven days after the polls, was the fastest since fully automated elections were implemented in 2010.
Before this, the fastest proclamation of party list winners was during the 2019 midterm polls, at nine days after the elections. The longest was in 2010 when the NBOC only had a partial proclamation for party lists 21 days after the polls.
Akbayan’s turnaround
Based on the national certificate of canvass, Akbayan led the race garnering 2,779,621 or 6.63 percent of the 41,658,790 total votes cast for party lists.
It was a turnaround for Akbayan, which faced delisting after failing to secure a party list seat in the 2019 and 2022 elections. It was saved, however, when the Supreme Court last year affirmed the cancellation of An Waray party list’s registration, and proclaimed it as the winner of the last of the 63 party list seats in the 2022 polls.
Akbayan, along with fellow incumbent party lists—Duterte Youth, with 2,338,564 votes (5.57 percent); and Tingog with 1,822,708 votes (4.34 percent)—are poised to secure the maximum three seats.
Duterte Youth, however, is not yet in the clear as a yet to be resolved 2019 petition argued its registration should be declared void from the beginning because the Comelec en banc approved it without the publication of its petition and without proper hearing, in violation of Republic Act No. 7941 or the Party-List System Act of 1995.
At least 50 other party lists are poised to obtain a seat in the incoming 20th Congress.
63 or 64 seats?
The fate of Philreca (No. 54 with 256,621 votes or 0.63 percent) and Gabriela (No. 55 with 254,034 votes, or 0.62 percent) will depend on how the Comelec will apply “Carpio formula” as ruled by the Supreme Court in its Banat v. Comelec (GR No. 179271) decision in 2009.
During Thursday’s session of the NBOC, Philreca’s lawyer Karlo Domondon filed a manifestation and motion declaring that the total number of party list seats to be allocated should be 64, not 63.
Under RA 7491, party list representatives shall constitute 20 percent of the total number of members of the House.
There are currently 254 seats for district representatives. Dividing this figure by 80 percent will result in 317.5. The 20 percent of 317.5 is 63.5, which Philreca argued, should be construed as 64.
Comelec Chair George Garcia acknowledged the motion and invited all party list representatives, lawyers and legal counsels to submit formal position papers to address key questions surrounding the seat allocation process.
Other key issues that the Comelec needs to resolve include how to calculate multiple seats for groups that may qualify for two or three posts based on jurisprudence and past Comelec practices; and the status of disqualified or deaccredited party lists and how this may affect the final allocation.
Gabriela’s protest
Gabriela, meanwhile, requested the Comelec to conduct an investigation, alleging that there was a reduction in the number of votes it received during the transmission hours after the polls closed on May 12.
“At 2:03 a.m., the Gabriela Women’s Party had garnered 252,562 votes, according to data from Comelec’s transparency media server. However, by 2:20 a.m., this number had inexplicably decreased by 49,614 votes,” Gabriela said in its letter to Garcia, attaching screenshots of the differing vote counts.
“This unexplained reduction raises serious concerns about the integrity and transparency of the electoral process. If votes for a sectoral party representing women and other vulnerable sectors can simply vanish without explanation, it risks disenfranchising not only the candidates but the countless women and marginalized communities whose voices they seek to represent,” it said.
The Comelec earlier explained the discrepancy in the vote counts was due to the duplication of data of election returns transmitted, which the recipient servers, including that of media’s, failed to clean.
In another development, Garcia said there was no reason to suspend the proclamation of presumptive congresswoman Leila de Lima as first nominee of ML party list (ranked 14th) despite the Court of Appeals order remanding one of her drug cases back to the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court.
According to the Comelec chief, De Lima has not yet been convicted with finality, which would bar her from holding elective office.
“[CA’s decision] has no effect on the proclamation of the party list and that personality,” he said.
