Comelec eyes partylist raffle to order names on ballot

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) floated on Sunday, the possibility of including all party-list organizations in the raffle to determine their order in the ballot in the absence of a final list of those that would be allowed to run in the 2016 balloting.

Election Commissioner Christian Robert Lim said the full commission has set an internal deadline to come up with a decision on which groups could participate in the forthcoming elections this week.

“The worst case scenario is if we will not be able to resolve by Dec. 1, all party-list groups will be included in the raffle,” Lim told reporters in an interview.

The election body has set the raffle on Dec. 5. But the names of party-list groups that will eventually be barred from joining the upcoming polling, will not appear on the ballot. Their slot would also not reflect on the ballot, said Lim.

“For example, if party-list ‘A’ got the No. 1 slot but was eventually denied by the en banc, there will be no No.1 in the ballot. We will go straight to No. 2,” he explained.

The Comelec started the practice of holding a raffle to determine the order in which the names of competing party-list groups would appear on the ballot in 2013 to do away with the practice of organizations marking their names with “A’s” and “1’s” in the hope that they would get first mention in the ballot.

Earlier, Comelec Chair Andres Bautista disclosed that 100 out of 243 party-list groups have already been approved by the Comelec divisions to participate in the May 9 elections. Of this number, 78 are existing party-list organizations while the rest are new.

The 143 groups whose manifestation of intent to participate in the 2016 elections have been denied were given a chance to appeal the unfavorable decision issued by the Comelec divisions before the en banc.

The full commission hoped to render final decision on these appeals by Tuesday.  SFM