The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is seeking to amend Republic Act 7941, or the “Party-List System Act,” to provide clearer guidelines on how the available seats allocated for party-list representatives in elections are distributed.
“I hope we can arrive at a point where changes to Republic Act 7941 are implemented. This would mean that the law itself will dictate the distribution process, rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court to decide the formula,” Comelec spokesperson Rex Laudiangco said.
The poll body issued the statement after it was supposed to proclaim 54 groups, but ended up suspending the proclamation of Duterte Youth and Bagong Henerasyon party lists.
Under Section 5, Article VI of the Constitution and the Party-List System Act, party-list representatives must constitute 20 percent of the total members of the House including those under the party-list, giving them 63 seats.
If party-list groups with 2 percent and higher votes are not able to fill up all the 63 seats, the next-in-line groups with the closest number of votes to 2 percent will get to secure one seat each until all party-list seats are filled.
“Since the 63 seats remained unoccupied, we applied the ‘Carpio formula,’ which is based on the remaining number of seats equating to the total partylist votes. Additionally, a second round of distribution was conducted,” Laudiangco said.
“Upon realizing that there were still unfilled seats, we referenced the BANAT vs. Comelec case, leading to a third round of calculations,” he added.
