Reforming political parties in the Philippines through MMP
The Philippines is no stranger to proportional representation, or at least some form of it. The current House of Representatives employs a supplementary-member or semi-PR system in the election of party-list representatives. This proposal expands the current set-up by transforming the House into a more proportionally representative legislative chamber through a different kind of PR: the mixed-member proportional system or MMP.
Under MMP, voters cast their votes the same way in today’s election. It retains the maximum 250 members from legislative districts, or ‘constituencies’. But it also expands the number of members elected through the party list system from the current 20 percent of the district representatives to at least 100, capping the total House membership at 350.
In addition, MMP opens the party list system to registered national political parties, while also requiring them to include in their lists sectoral representation from the labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, women and other gender, youth and other sectors; except the religious. The winning threshold is further increased, so that political parties which have obtained at least 5 — from the original 2— percent of the total number of party votes are allocated seats in proportion to their share of the votes. The 3-seat cap is removed. Instead, the D’Hondt formula is used to determine the number of seats to be allocated among political parties, taking into account their number of candidates already elected as constituency members, to achieve greater proportionality in the House of Representatives.
Finally, because MMP requires strong party organization, changing political affiliation automatically unseats a member, thereby triggering either a by-election in the constituency or substitution by the next candidate appearing on the party’s list.
This new system will require the political parties to organize effectively in terms of recruitment as well as campaigning. Because the parties will have to compete directly with each other, they need to adopt distinct branding, policies, and objectives — thusly, a more coherent form of political expression — in order to differentiate themselves from one another. All the while, increasing their role and influence in determining the composition of the House of Representatives will shift the public’s interest away from popular personalities and into the more organized political operations of the parties. Lastly, political parties will have to enforce strict discipline among its members to avoid losing a seat due to turncoatism, a perennial problem in our current party system.
