A group of senior citizens went to the Commission on Elections office on Monday to ask the poll body to reconsider its disqualification from party-list elections.
Members of Senior Citizens party-list asked Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. to proclaim the group, which received 672,000 votes in the elections earlier this month. It would have been among the first batch of party-list groups proclaimed winners last week if not for a Comelec decision to disqualify the group for sending two sets of nominees in a proposed term-sharing agreement.
“Please, chairman, think of the senior citizens. It will be unfortunate if they don’t get representation from Congress. Who else will fight for their rights and for their benefits?,” Nila Magsaysay, the party-list’s second nominee, said in Filipino in a Radio DZMM report.
House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has sided with the party-list, saying in an InterAksyon report that it should instead be made to submit just one set of nominees.
He said senior citizens make up “17 percent of the country’s population, for which it certainly deserves to be represented in Congress as a marginalized sector. The party and the sector it represents should not suffer for whatever unlawful agreements were entered into by its nominees.”
