Declare deserving party-list winners, ACT Teachers asks Comelec after Duterte Youth's cancellation
At A Glance
- ACT Teachers Party-list is prodding the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to expedite the declaration of winning party-lists in the 2025 mid-term polls following the cancellation of Duterte Youth Party-list's registration.
ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro (left), incoming Rep. Antonio Tinio (Facebook)
ACT Teachers Party-list is prodding the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to expedite the declaration of winning party-lists in the 2025 mid-term polls following the cancellation of Duterte Youth Party-list's registration.
We urge the Comelec en banc to uphold this decision so that truly deserving party-list groups like Gabriela Women's Party can be proclaimed before June 30 and hit the ground running in serving their constituents, incoming ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio said in a statement Wednesday, June 18.
Being among the top finishers in last month's elections, Duterte Youth was supposed to get three seats in the House of Representatives in the upcoming 20th Congress.
One of those seats would now likely go to Gabriela Party-list, which like ACT Teachers belongs to the militant Makabayan bloc.
In the same statement, Outgoing ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro welcomed the Comelec Second Division's decision to cancel Duterte Youth's registration.
This stemmed from a 2019 case filed by youth leaders who alleged that the party-list's registration was approved without proper proceedings mandated by the Party-list System Act.
We welcome this long-overdue decision by the Comelec Second Division. The Duterte Youth party-list was never formed to uphold the genuine interests of Filipino youth - it was established as a red-tagging organization designed to benefit the Duterte family and their political machinery, Castro stated.
Ang Duterte Youth ay hindi tunay na kinatawan ng kabataan. Ginawa lamang ito upang palakasin ang pampulitikang makinarya ng pamilyang Duterte at gawing sandata laban sa mga progresibong organisasyon ng kabataan, she added.
(The Duterte Youth is not a genuine representative of the youth. It was merely created to strengthen the Duterte family's political machinery and to be used as a weapon against progressive youth organizations.)
Tinio, a returning congressman, emphasized the importance of upholding the decision at the en banc level to ensure genuine representation in the party-list system.