At least 25 party-lists secure congressional seats

Sunday, May 26, 2013

MANILA, Philippines - Commission on Elections commissioner (Comelec) Grace Padaca released on Wednesday a list of 25 leading party-list groups in the official tallies of the National Board of Canvassers.

Buhay Party-list has kept its top spot with 1,255,734 votes so far, while A Teacher follows with 1,033,873 votes as reflected in 95 percent of all certificates of canvass (COC) including provinces and municipalities.

Progressive party-list Bayan Muna comes third with 945,639 votes, followed by rural energy group 1-CARE having 931,303 votes and social democratic party Akbayan with 820,351 votes.

Regional group Ako Bicol, the front running party-list in the 2010 polls, has ranked only sixth this year with 761,115 votes while agriculture-oriented Abono is seventh with 753,161.

Completing the list are:

8. OFW Family - 735,854
9. Gabriela - 706,194
10. Senior Citizens - 671,916
11. COOP-NATCCO - 640,180
12. AGAP - 588,095
13. CIBAC - 578,320
14. Magdalo - 561,613
15. An Waray - 540,210
16. Abamin - 465,192
17. Act Teachers - 449,710
18. Butil - 437,084
19. ACT-CIS - 371,309
20. Amin - 370,351
21. LPGMA - 369,989
22. Kalinga - 367,839
23. TUCP - 365,299
24. YACAP - 364,278
25. AGRI - 363,204

With only a remaining 5 percent of COCs left to be tallied, groups that reached the quota of at least 2 percent of all party-list votes cast are likely to have secured a seat for their nominees in the House of Representatives.

Comelec's initial computation showed that 200,000 to 206,000 votes mark the two-percent quota. The NBOC prefers, however, to wait for all COCs to be completed before the definitive quota is established.

As of Wednesday afternoon, meanwhile, mostly canvass certificates from overseas voting precincts are left to be considered.

Succeeding two-percent of votes earned will grant another nominee of each party-list a position in Congress.

The country's party-list system grants 20 percent of all congressional seats to sectoral groups.

In 2010, 41 seats were given to party-list representatives with 16 seats left unfilled.