Comelec cracks down on party-list substitutions

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is looking at increasing the number of official party-list group nominees from five to 10 in the 2025 midterm polls to prevent abuses of the substitution rule.

Chairman George Erwin Garcia said on Thursday that he will raise the matter to the commission en banc to stop the practice of substituting the entire five-man list of nominees after the election to accommodate a new set of candidates.

«We are thinking that it would be better if we will require all party-list groups to submit 10 nominees each but after they have exhausted using the 10 nominees, they would no longer be allowed to submit additional nominees,» Garcia said. «It would be very unlikely that all 10 nominees would die, get sick, or resign.»

«It is needed so that there would be no misrepresentation. So that the integrity of the party-list would be protected against wrongful substitution [because of a loophole in the law],» he added.

Garcia noted that there is a pending case before the Supreme Court questioning the substitution made by a party-list group after the election, obviously referring to a ruling of the commission en banc which granted the request of P3PWD's five original nominees to withdraw their certificates of acceptance and nomination, and gave due course to a new list of nominees led by retired Comelec commissioner Rowena Guanzon.

Before the 2022 elections, the Comelec issued Resolution 10717 setting Nov. 15, 2021 as the deadline for withdrawal of party-list nominees. Guanzon was among the signatories of the resolution, issued in August 2021, as she was still a commissioner at that time.

«No substitution shall be valid if filed beyond Nov. 15, 2021, unless the list of nominees originally submitted has been exhausted due to death and/or incapacity of the nominees,» the resolution read.

According to Garcia, it was not the first time that all nominees of a party-list group withdrew the acceptance of their nominations after the elections.

«We are waiting for the decision of the SC in that case. [We hope] the SC can decide on the issue of substitution in the party-list. The issue there is if a party-list nominee can withdraw after the