by Camille Joyce M. Lisay*

One in five parties under the party-list system competing in the May 13, 2019 elections have links to the current administration. By link, we mean these parties either have ties with the PDP-Laban, are being endorsed by Pres. Rodrigo Duterte, or are running as party-list arms of the newly established ‘Hugpong ng Pagbabago’ coalition. Most of these parties have also pledged their support to the administration’s senatorial front liners, particularly, Christopher ‘Bong’ Go and Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa.

Interestingly, of 31 out of 134 party-lists fostering ties with the administration, 12 are ‘novice’ parties or have been in existence only in the past three years prior to the May 2019 elections. The table below gives a summary of the parties based on their ‘manifestations of intent’ submitted to the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), as well as on the organizational profiles posted on their respective webpages and social media portals. We indicated the links to these webpages so readers can do their own fact-check.

COMELEC through Resolution 10488 required the party-lists to register their respective webpages and social media profiles to track their campaign expenditures effective February this year.