Republic Act 7941 or commonly as the Philippine Party-List System Act declares that the State shall promote proportional representation in the election of members in the House of Representatives through a party-list system…But the manner of allocation of seats by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) negates the principle of proportional representation.

BY FELIX P. MUGA II
Mathematics Department
Ateneo de Manila University
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 13 May 6- 12, 2007

The Philippines has conducted party-list elections since 1998. Our party-list system is considered unique compared to other countries which have a party-list system in their parliament or legislature.

Republic Act 7941 or commonly as the Philippine Party-List System Act declares that the State shall promote proportional representation in the election of members in the House of Representatives through a party-list system to enable Filipino citizens who belong to the marginalized and under-represented sectors, organizations and parties to participate in the formulation and enactment of laws.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution provides that 20 percent of the total number of members in the House of Representatives must come from the party-list system. This means that out of 5 representatives, 1 must come from the party-list groups while 4 are from the congressional districts. Since only 1 representative is elected from each congressional district, the ratio of the number of party-list seats to the number of congressional districts is ¼. Hence to determine the total number of party-list seats, we use the formula below:

total no. of party-list seats = total no. of congressional districts / 4

Republic Act 7941 or commonly as the Philippine Party-List System Act declares that the State shall promote proportional representation in the election of members in the House of Representatives through a party-list system…But the manner of allocation of seats by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) negates the principle of proportional representation.

In the 2004 synchronized national and local elections, there were 212 congressional districts, hence the available number of party-list seats is 212/4 = 53.

However, in the 2004 party-list election, only 24 out of 53 seats were filled up by the seat allocation method specified by R.A. 7941 and implemented by the Commission on Election (COMELEC) which we call as the COMELEC Formula. The entire number of seats were not allocated also for the 1998 and the 2001 party-list elections.

In a proportional party-list system which RA 7941 has vowed to promote, the number of available seats allocated for the party-list system must be completely filled up and that the allocation of seats must affirm the principle of proportional representation. This is a great challenge posed by the party-list seat allocation problem. However, this problem is not intractable and is solvable. This is the subject of another article “On Fair Allocation of Power in the Party-List System.”

What is the reason of the inability of the COMELEC Formula to distribute the entire number of available of seats in proportion to the number of votes of the party-list groups?

RA 7941 provides that (a) a party-list group that receives at least 2% of the total party-list votes is entitled to 1 seat; (b) those parties that obtain more than 2% of the votes are entitled to additional seats in proportion to their number of votes; and (c) no party shall receive more than 3 seats.

The principle of proportional representation in the party-list system asserts that the share of seats of a party-list group must be equal to the share of votes of the party-list group. This principle can be expressed mathematically as s/s_T = v/v_T where s and v are the number of seats and the number of votes of the party-list group, respectively, and s_T is the available party-list seats and v_T is the total number of party-list votes. Therefore, by the principle of proportional representation the number of seats that a party-list group received is s = v(s_T/v_T). If the actual allocation of seats to the party-list group is F(v), then there is an error between the ideal and the actual number of seats allocated. The seat allocation error is defined by v(s_T/v_T) – F(v). Since the allocation of seats involves an integer or a whole number, then the error is significant if the absolute value of the error is at least 1 seat. Hence, we define the degree of negation of the seat allocation method as the integer part of the absolute value of the seat allocation. For example, if the seat allocation error is 2.3455, then the degree of negation is 2.

Therefore, we can say that the given seat allocation method contradicts the principle of proportional representation if the degree of negation is greater than or equal to 1 seat.

If we compute the seat allocation error of the COMELEC Formula on the 2004 party-list election, the total error is equivalent to 29 seats. Note that the total available number of party-list seats is 53 and the total number of seats allocated by the COMELEC Formula is 24.

The error is significant on 4 parties:

1) 2.01300154 on BAYAN MUNA
2) 1.06298758 on CIBAC
3) 1.04815998 on ABA-AKO
4) 1.01708142 on ANAD

Therefore, the degree of negation of the COMELEC Formula is 5 seats on the 2004 Party-List election. Since the total number of party-list votes in the 2004 election was 12,721,952, this means that out of voters who were not represented in the 13th Congress, about voters were denied of representation in the House of Representation by the COMELEC Formula.

The negation on BAYAN MUNA was caused by the imposition of the 3-seat cap and the negation on CIBAC, ABA-AKO and ANAD was caused by the use of 2% actual vote threshold.

We conclude this article by stating the following theorem.

Theorem

Let v be the number of votes of a party-list group, v_T be the total party-list votes and s_T be the total number of available party-list seats in a party-list election where the COMELEC Formula is being implemented. Then the COMELEC Formula negates the principle of proportional representation on v if s_T > 50 and 1. k/s_T <= v/v_T < 0.02k for k = 1,2,3 (This is the use of the 2% actual vote threshold.)
2. 4/s_T <= v/v_T (This is the imposition of the 3-seat cap.)

For the proof of this theorem please see my article “On the Negation of the Party-List System Act on the Principle of Proportional Representation” on the book “On Political Parties” which will be published by the Center of People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) in May 2007 or visit my web page in
http://www.math.admu.edu.ph/~fpmuga.

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