Party-list groups backed by the military were among those that benefited from the Supreme Court (SC) ruling on expansion of party-list representatives in Congress.

An additional 17 party-list groups were awarded one seat each by the High Court to fill up the available 54 seats for the party-list system, marking the first time that the constitutional provision that party-list members should constitute 20 percent of the House of Representatives will be observed.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier disqualified an 18th party-list group, the FPJPM, for supposedly not actually representing the marginalized sector.

The disqualification of FPJPM, or the Filipinos for Peace Justice and Progress Movement, has been upheld by the High Court, Commission Nicodemo Ferrer told abs-cbnews.com/Newsbreak.

The 17 new party-list groups failed to break the 2 percent threshold that assures a party one seat, but the SC, applying a new formula, ruled that all available seats for sectoral representation should be filled up to abide by the spirit and intention of the Constitution.

Gov't support

The list of winning party-list groups includes those that have received overt as well as covert support from the government machinery. These are Uni-Mad (United Movement Against Drugs), Anad (Alliance for National Democracy), and Bantay (The True Marcos Loyalists Association of the Philippines).

These three were the top vote-getters in the local absentee voting in 2007, where close to 40,000 soldiers took part.

The local absentee voting takes place ahead of the scheduled elections to allow government employees deputized by the Comelec for election duties to cast their votes.

In the 2007 polls, there was an unusual interest among soldiers in the local absentee voting. In the 2004 national polls, only less than 8,000 participated in the local absentee voting.

But in 2007, the figure rose to a record 55,000. Of this figure, 52,662 applications were from the military and the police. The Comelec only approved 39,273 applications from the two institutions.

Of the 36,361 votes cast for the local absentee voting, Uni-Mad got the highest with 19,684 votes, followed by Bantay and Anad. The ties of these three party-list groups to the military were undeniable.

Uni-Mad’s second nominee is retired general Alphonsus Crucero, a classmate of General Hermogenes Esperon Jr., the Armed Forces of the Philippines' chief-of-staff during the elections.

Palparan's Bantay

On the other hand, Anad’s base comes from anti-Communist groups organized by the military.

Bantay’s first nominee is the controversial retired general Jovito Palparan, known as the “Butcher” and “Executioner” in leftist circles. Bantay party got its votes in provinces where Palparan was previously assigned, and where the anti-insurgency campaign was most active. These provinces include Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Bulacan and Mindoro.

In the Visayas, where Palparan was assigned, Bantay also got respectable votes, particularly in Western Samar, Eastern Samar  and Leyte. Earlier reports said the military actively campaigned for Bantay in these areas.

Parallel with the thinly-disguised military support for Uni-Mad, Anad, and Bantay was the effort to undermine leftist-oriented party-list groups. Prior to the elections, members of left-leaning party-list groups were harassed and killed supposedly as part of the anti-insurgency campaign.

Postponed

Meanwhile, the Comelec postponed the proclamation of the additional party-list representatives due to a conflict in figures for votes cast in the party-list race.

Comelec chair Jose Melo said a re-computation of the winning parties is imperative since what the SC used were apparently not the updated figures.

Justice Antonio Carpio, who penned the ruling, took it upon himself to compute the allocation of the party-list seats to the winning groups and listed which of these were entitled to how many seats.

But Melo said the SC failed to factor in that FPJPM, which used to stand for Fernando Poe Jr. for President Movement, has been disqualified. Thus, the seat for FPJPM would have to go to another party-list group.

Also, the base number used by the SC in the computation was 15 million votes cast for the party-list, but Melo says the actual number should be about 16 million. The actual base could affect the seat allocation for one or two party-list groups.

He said he sent a technical team to the SC to confer with Carpio and reconcile the figures.