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Poll watchdog groups eye anti-dynasty provision in the party-list law
Poll watchdog groups eye anti-dynasty provision in the party-list law
By Dhel Nazario
An anti-dynasty provision in the party-list law is one of the key legislative reform areas being looked at by the two of the country's poll watchdog groups.
According to Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) Executive Director Ona Caritos, hopefully, if the anti-dynasty provision for all the positions is not possible, maybe they negotiate with the Congress to include an anti dynasty provision in the party-list.
"Para if you have a relative in other positions, then you can't be a nominee of a party-list which would assume office at the House of Representatives," she explained.
She added that the party-list has been used as a backdoor opportunity or some backdoor route for political dynasties to gain another seat in Congress.
National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) Secretary-General Eric Alvia said that they have been pushing for the anti-political dynasty provision for the past decades but nothing has happened
"But we will still put that in the agenda for this coming Congress," he stated.
Both groups are also geared towards the review of the Omnibus Election Code. Alvia mentioned that there are a lot of provisions in the code that have to be amended already. He said that the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms has already submitted a draft and that they will have to go through the provisions that were changed.
Caritos stated that the Chairperson of the said committee, Senator Imee Marcos, has filed in the last Congress, a new version of the Omnibus Election Code. She added that Marcos was honest and said that this version that she filed was not really perfect, and it's still up for discussion for deliberations.
"So there's a big opportunity for all of us to take part and to be part of the discussions and the deliberations because most probably, that bill will be refiled by Senator Imee and all of the reforms that we've always talked about for the past decade or more than a decade already we can place or include in this new Omnibus Election Code," she explained.
For Namfrel, Alvia said that they are going to submit their reform agenda to the incoming Senate Committees on Electoral Reform. He added that they are also looking at making provisions that would make voter's registration easier.