The party-list elections have become a back door for politicians to perpetuate themselves in power, said Danilo Arao, a journalism professor and convenor of the election watchdog group Kontra Daya.

The Makabayan bloc warns that the government’s campaign against dissent won’t stop at members of the progressive coalition.

MAJORITY OF the party-list groups that vied for seats in Congress in the May 2010 elections have since dutifully filed their sworn Statements of Election Contributions and Expenditures (SECEs) with the Commission on Elections (Comelec). This includes all of the 43 organizations that now have nominees sitting in the House of Representatives.

THEY are avowed representatives of the poor and the marginalized, but in the May 10, 2010 elections, 12 party-list groups allied with two candidates for president, one for vice president, and one for senator splurged a staggering P426.16 million on television ads that aired in the last two weeks of the campaign period.