Bayan Muna wants Supreme Court to review party-list rule

Bayan Muna, now in danger of losing one representative in the next Congress, will ask the Supreme Court to "revisit" the rule which grants three seats in the House of Representatives solely to the topnotcher in the party-list race.

Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo questioned the so-called "Panganiban formula" that will be applied in this year's elections as he expressed concerns that the new computation will further marginalize the ranks of activists in Philippine legislature.

"We will ask the Supreme Court to revisit the formula. We hope it will check if the rule is equitable ... and if it is faithful to the spirit of the party-list system," Ocampo said in Filipino during an interview on GMA News' Unang Balita.

He added that, "In the past we questioned this but we did not formally seek redress since we were number one then."

Bayan Muna had been the consistent frontrunner in pre-election surveys of party-list groups. It currently ranks second on the official tally of the National Board of Canvassers.

"We might become fewer, and party-list groups might become marginalized if the computations will become this strict," Ocampo said.

The formula, penned by then Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban in a Supreme Court decision, was supposed to have been implemented in the 2001 and 2004 elections but the Comelec used the "2-4-6" computation instead.

Under the "2-4-6" rule, groups that get six percent of votes cast in the party-list elections will get the maximum three seats.

Groups that get four percent gain two seats, while those who get two percent will take one seat.

In a press conference Monday, Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos said the "Panganiban formula" would be used this time around, which means the El Shaddai-backed Buhay party-list stands to get three House seats.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento was quoted in a newspaper report as saying that the poll body would observe this since the new formula was the "prevailing doctrine."

The Supreme Court used the formula in resolving the case of Veterans Federation Party et al. versus Comelec in 2000.

Under the Panganiban formula, party-list groups with at least two percent of votes are guaranteed one seat in Congress. The maximum is also three seats.

The additional number of seats are computed by dividing each group's total votes by the number of votes earned by the "first party," or the top vote-getter in the party-list race.

The quotient is then multiplied by the additional number of seats gained by the "first party" beyond the two-percent minimum.

Using this formula on the current Comelec tally figures, Bayan Muna's votes (925,042) divided by Buhay's votes (1,112,486) yields a quotient of 0.83.

Multiplying the two additional seats for Buhay, Bayan Muna gets a product of 1.66. - GMANews.TV