Manila: The Supreme Court ruled that a party representing senior citizens should be allowed to occupy the seats it won at the lower house of Congress last May, after its proclamation was held in abeyance in two months, a spokesperson said.
In full court, the Apex Court ruled that the Coalition of Associations of Senior Citizens in the Philippines Inc., a sectoral party representing 3.7 million senior citizens nationwide, should be allowed to occupy seats at the House of Representatives, after winning 10th place among all other marginalised sectors that ran in the recently concluded May elections, said Ted Te, spokesman of the High Tribunal.
Earlier, the Supreme Court told Comelec to reserve a seat for the Senior Citizens party-list after its proclamation was “held in abeyance”.
At the time, the High Court also ordered Comelec to temporarily stay the proclamation of another sectoral party, Abang Lingkod (Your Servant).
It was a final reversal of Comelec’s decision last year to disqualify the two sectoral parties from running for seats in the May elections this year.
Last June this year, the High Court issued a status quo ante order against Comelec’s disqualification of the two sectoral party-list groups on May 10, just three days before the May 13 polls.
After the polls, the Senior Citizens party-list received more than 600,000 votes, allowing it to have seats at the House of Representative. At the same time, Abang Lingkod received 200,000 votes, which also qualified for a seat in the House of Representatives.
This problem began on April 5, 2012, when the Supreme Court asked Comelec to review its disqualification of the groups.
In response, Comelec included the names of the party-lists in the ballots in January 2013, in preparation for the May 2013 elections. But on May 10, Comelec affirmed again the two group’s disqualification.
