Thursday, May 24, 2007 Editorials: The other election: party-list
MOVING under the radar in the recently May 14 polls is the party-list elections.
At least one party-list group leader, Pastor "Jun" Alcover of the Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (Anad) has complained of the snub, supposedly by media.
Media, though, is not solely to blame for it because the elections are what they are: people's attention and not just the media are on individual elective government posts.
But interesting things indeed happened in this year's party-list polls in Cebu, one of these being the ascendancy of Anad, a mainly Cebu-based anti-communist group.
Ideologies
Anad topping the party-list elections in Cebu means the loss of ground of its rival, the militant Bayan Muna and its allied organizations.
One can interpret this as a sign that Cebuanos' perception of these groups and the ideologies they are representing is shifting in the anti-communist group’s favor.
Or one can deny that and say that elections in this country are not about ideologies but about the ability to mount a decent campaign, meaning, machinery and funding.
Advantage
What makes the 2007 elections different is that people identified with the Arroyo administration seem to be giving extra attention to the party-list polls.
Two points are notable here: politics and counter-insurgency.
The political aspect concerns the effort of groups allied with President Arroyo to once again control Congress, whose members include party-list representatives.
The military, meanwhile, laid down a plan to wipe out the insurgents in a few years, thus the increased propaganda against "legal fronts" that include party-list groups.
Those that benefited from these developments are naturally groups that are either merely pro-government or are directly organized and funded by Arroyo allies.
Militants may not like this development, but they should have seen it coming.
By aligning themselves with the anti-Arroyo forces, militant party-list groups invited a response from the pro-Arroyo groups and finally got it in the May 14 elections.
Real loser
The loser here is of course the party-list provision in the Constitution.
Reducing the party-list elections to a battle of ideologies or between pro-government and anti-government forces destroys the constitutional intention.
Party-list groups should benefit sectors, not partisan or ideological goals.
