An Waray party-list to elevate seats allocation case to Supreme Court

TACLOBAN CITY, May 20 (PNA) – The An Waray party-list will file a petition before the Supreme Court seeking the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to adopt a “supplemental formula” to ensure a proportional allocation of seats for party list winners.

Lawyer Raoul C. Creencia, the party list second nominee said that through modified formula, one seat is equivalent to 1.69 percent of the total votes cast for partylist, which will entitle An Waray two seats in the House of Representatives.

“Despite our efforts, we failed to convince the Comelec to judiciously assert its mandate and adopt a supplemental or modified formula to ensure a proportional allocation of seats. We believe that a formula consistent with the four inviolable parameters set by the Supreme Court should have been adopted to prevent the disproportionate distribution of seats,” Creencia said.

Creencia argued that Gabriela party-list with 1,376,795 votes only got 2 seats, while Agbiag party-list with 240,723 votes got one seat. “Doing so would have been more in keeping with the spirit and intent of the (party-list) law.”

In the case of An Waray, the group garnered 590,895 votes or 1.825 percent of the votes cast for party-list. The group was allocated with one seat in Congress as proclaimed by the poll body on Thursday. The first nominee is incumbent Rep. Victoria Noel.

In the allocation of the 59 seats for party-list representatives, the poll body used the formula provided by the Supreme Court based in its ruling on the Banat versus Comelec case in 2009.

Under the “Banat formula”, the participating party-lists shall be ranked from the highest to the lowest based on the number of votes they garnered during the May 9 polls before undergoing two rounds of allocation of seats.

The modified formula proposed by An Waray was to divide the total number of votes cast in the party-list system by the votes obtained by the party-list group.

The group cited a 2009 decision by Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, which laid down a three-stage formula for allocation of seats for winner 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 for party-list.

In the next stage, the parties get one additional seat or two seats based on the allocation of the remaining seats. The process goes on to a third stage if there are still seats left to fill the 20 percent allocation.

“We will not stop here. We will bring the case to the Supreme Court because we really want Eastern Visayas to have more representations in the 17th Congress,” he added.

The party list is a system provides better representation of marginalized sectors, as well as groups without "well-defined constituencies," in the House of Representatives.

The Constitution allots to the party list 20 percent of seats in the House of Representatives.

In 2013, the Region 8-based party-list won two seats in Congress after earning 540,000 votes. (PNA)
RMA/SARWELL Q. MENIANO