Party-list decision based on SC order–Brillantes
They don’t know what they’re talking about.
That’s how Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. reacted on Sunday to the opposition of two parties to being given fewer seats in the House of Representatives than they had won by polling the most number of votes in the May 13 party-list election.
Buhay Hayaan Yumabong (Buhay) on Friday questioned the Comelec’s basis for taking back one of the three seats earlier allocated to it to comply with a Supreme Court order to reserve a seat, or seats, for the Coalition of Associations of Senior Citizens (Senior Citizens).
On Saturday, An Waray said the Comelec could not take back one of the two seats that had been allocated to it because it was the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) and not the Comelec that had jurisdiction over questions involving the number of party-list seats.
Election lawyer Romeo Macalintal on Friday said the Comelec could not rescind without due process the May 28 proclamation of Buhay as the top winner entitled to three seats in the House.
Macalintal said the Supreme Court order to the Comelec to reserve seats for the Senior Citizens party need not affect the Buhay party, as the reserved seats could be taken from the seats not yet allocated.
“They don’t know what they are talking about,” Brillantes told the Inquirer by phone from Hong Kong.
“It’s the Supreme Court that ordered the Comelec to reserve seats for the Senior Citizens. So it’s not our jurisdiction but that of the high tribunal.”
“Do they want to undermine the Supreme Court?” he said, adding that the Comelec was only following orders from the Supreme Court.
“We will also wait for their final decision,” he said.
Atienza protest
Lito Atienza, Buhay’s second nominee to the House, said on Friday that the Comelec decision to take back one of the three seats allocated to his group was unfair.
“The Supreme Court didn’t say the Comelec should get the Senior Citizens’ seat from us. That’s unfair,” said Atienza, a former mayor of Manila.
An Waray Rep. Florencio Noel said on Saturday that his group was not bothered by the Comelec’s decision to take back one of his group’s two seats because the issue was “jurisdictional.”
The Comelec has already proclaimed An Waray winner and allocated it two seats so it is no longer the Comelec but the HRET that has jurisdiction over the question of the number of congressional seats, Noel said.
“If the Comelec proceeds (with taking away one of our seats), we will write them,” he said.
But party-list leaders Walden Bello of Akbayan and Antonio Tinio of ACT Teachers on Sunday sided with the Comelec.
“The Comelec is merely following the Supreme Court’s decision to ensure seats for the Senior Citizens party,” Bello said in a text message to the Inquirer.
“This is the peril of being a loudmouth. The dust has not yet settled, but Lito Atienza was already saying he would repeal the RH (reproductive health) law. He should have waited for the final proclamation before boasting of his grand plans,” Bello said.
Carpio formula
“That is a consequence of adhering to the Carpio formula should the Senior Citizens be accredited,” Tinio said, referring to the Comelec’s taking back seats and to the Supreme Court decision written by Associate Justice Antonio Carpio laying down a three-stage formula for determining how many seats should be allocated to winning party-list groups.
In the first stage, the first seat is given to parties that obtained a minimum of 2 percent of the total votes cast in a party-list election, Tinio said.
In the second stage, the parties get one additional seats or two seats—the maximum is three—based on the allocation of the remaining seats.
The process goes on to a third stage if there are still seats left from the party-list quota for distribution, Tinio said.
Party-list groups are entitled to 20 percent of all the seats in the House.
Buhay polled more than 1 million votes, qualifying it for three seats in the House.
Temporary
Atienza and Noel appear to have forgotten that the proclamation of their parties is only tentative because the Comelec has yet to determine which parties really won the election, as the election watchdog does not know yet the final tallies of the votes cast for the winning parties as a result of the Senior Citizens’ challenge to its disqualification.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Arturo Brion said the pending disqualification cases involving party-list groups in the Comelec and the Supreme Court meant not only that these groups have not been effectively and finally disqualified but also, and “more importantly … at this point, all the winning party-list candidates have not been identified and the total number of votes cast for all qualified participating party-list groups are not available.”
“Without this total number, the Comelec has not definitely established who the winning party-list groups are, as all participating parties are affected by the total number of votes cast for all participating and qualified party-list groups—the common denominator that the law requires to be used,” Brion said.
Brion issued a separate opinion concurring in last week’s Supreme Court resolutions on four party-list groups, including the Senior Citizens, questioning their disqualification from the May 13 election.
Last week, the Supreme Court issued a status quo ante order in favor of the Senior Citizens and Abang Lingkod, which stopped the Comelec from implementing its May 10 orders disqualifying the two groups.
The Supreme Court also held in abeyance the proclamation of the two party-list groups pending final resolution of their cases.
Reserved seats
It was only in the case of the Senior Citizens that the court directed the Comelec to reserve a seat, or seats, for it in the House. Having won more than 600,000 votes, the Senior Citizens is entitled to two seats.
The Comelec has so far proclaimed 38 winning party-list groups entitled to 53 seats in the House of Representatives.
In his three-page separate concurring opinion, Brion said he held the view that the Supreme Court should “uniformly” issue a status quo ante order to the petitioners because nothing was final yet on the party-list issue.
He said he recognized the fact that the Comelec had the discretion to proclaim party-list groups that from its preliminary computations “appear to have passed the 2-percent threshold and those who have earned for themselves additional seats up to a maximum of three.”
Tallies not final
But he noted that the Comelec was making proclamations “without the element of finality since the tallies on which the proclamations were based are not yet final.”
“The proclaimed party-list groups should be aware of the tentative nature of their proclamations since these may be affected by the final tally based on the final common denominator to be used,” Brion said.
He said the manner of determining and counting the winning party-list candidates was established by the Supreme Court in the case of the Barangay Association for National Advancement and Transparency (Banat). This will require the identification of the qualified party-list groups participating in the elections and the aggregation of their total votes to serve as the common denominator in determining the percentage of the votes obtained by each of the party-list group.
All are affected
Following the court’s final rulings on these disqualification cases, Brion said the votes for these party-list groups should be included or excluded in the “reckoning of the final common denominator required to be used.”
“From the perspective of the status quo ante or temporary restraining order prayed for, even if no issuance is made in any of these cases, a final ruling that these party-list groups qualify means that their votes shall be included in the tally with the potential effect of affecting the percentages of all other party-list groups, even of those who have already been proclaimed,” Brion said.—With a report from Gil Cabacungan Jr.
