New party-list formula sought

PARTY-LIST groups were divided on Tuesday over a petition filed by the camp of An Waray urging the Commission on Elections (Comelec) sitting as National Board of Canvassers to adopt a different formula to determine the number of seats to be allocated to winning groups.

During the canvassing of votes on Tuesday, An Waray party-list group lawyer and second nominee Raoul Creencia announced that the group had filed a petition for the partial suspension of proclamation of winners in the party-list elections late Monday afternoon.

Creencia explained that if the Comelec applied the so-called Carpio formula, “it would cause gross disproportion of allocation of seats.” “That’s why we recommend that another formula be made by the commission,” he said. Five other party-list groups joined the petition.

The new formula he suggested was to divide the total number of votes cast in the party-list system by the votes obtained by the party-list group.

“In simple computation, we requested that the threshold of the two percent be reduced to 1.69 considering that there’s a big turnout of voters in this elections,” he added.

In a 2009 decision, Associate Justice Antonio Carpio laid 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 two percent of the total votes cast in a party-list election. In the second stage, the parties get one additional seat or two seats based on the allocation of the remaining seats. The maximum seats a party-list can win is three.

The process goes on to a third stage if there are still be seats left from the party-list quota of 20 percent of all the seats in the House. There are 59 seats available for the party-list groups in the 17th Congress.

But Magdalo lawyer Reynaldo Robles opposed the petition, saying An Waray merely wanted to increase their seats in the House by pushing for a new formula. “They already have two seats, now they want three,” Robles said in an interview.

The group 1 Ang Edukasyon also manifested its opposition to the petition.

Abono party-list lawyer Raul Casipit also opposed An Waray’s petition: “In fact, the petition wants to change the decision of the Supreme Court,” said Casipit.