House party SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 06/07/2010

House party

SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 06/07/2010 Official results of the May 2010 elections have yet to be declared, and while people are anxiously awaiting the proclamation of the next president and vice president, not many are as interested in the party-list results... except maybe those who are in the party-lists themselves. But maybe we should all pay attention. After all, party-lists make up a chunk of Congress — some 57 seats are allotted for them in the House, and we all know every seat counts for any sitting president. So why shouldn’t we wonder why strange goings-on seemed to be happening way before election time? At the beginning of this year, grumblings could be heard from some of these interested, er, parties. One of the loudest was Ang Ladlad, which the Commission on Elections (Comelec) decided not to approve, but which the Supreme Court overturned. It may have been a small victory if Ladlad failed to get enough votes to make it to Congress. Another group was complaining in January that the Comelec seemed to be operating under the thumb of Malacañang, as it kept rejecting and delisting three party-list groups known to have been critical of the Arroyo administration, particularly the scandals, issues and controversies that hounded her government. These were the party-list groups of the progressive Makabayan coalition — the ACT Teachers’ Party-list, Courage Party-list and Migrante Sectoral Party. According to a Bulatlat report, the “Comelec separately rejected the petitions for registration of Act and Courage for the 2010 party-list elections and delisted Migrante along with 25 other party-list groups. They said they were not given enough time to challenge the Comelec decisions, and that though they were able to prove their presence in the majority of provinces and municipalities, the Comelec still rejected them.... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100607com7.html

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