Why Abono Party List will get three seats in Congress

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

ROSALES, Pangasinan  – By merging forces with well-entrenched political families, the Abono Party-list group expects to get three seats in congress in the May 13 polls. Engineer Rosendo So, Abono Party-List’s chair, said since Pangasinan and La Union produced two congressmen in the 2010 election in Representatives Robert Raymund Estrella and Francisco Ortega III, the group’s third nominee would be a shoo-in in congress after the party joined forces with the formidable political families of the Dys in Isabela province. 
So opined that with the alliance the party entered with the Dys and buttressed by its pro-farmers advocacies in the past years victory, for the three nominees looms. 
”Iyong mga efforts natin sa anti-smuggling, iyong sa hog raisers, poultry raisers malaking tulong sa livelihood nila. Maraming manga-ngampanya sa atin sa other areas,” he said.
He explained the provinces of Tarlac and Nueva Ecija will go for Abono after the party fought to stop the smuggling of rice, pork, chicken, onions that undermined the local agricultural industry. He said the onions growers in Nueva Ecija promised their support to the party after he fought against the smuggling of onions in the country.
 He said the voters nationwide know that after Abono Party List fought “tooth and nail” recently against the unabated smuggling of cheap rice from Vietnam, India, and China the gate price of palay returns to P17 from P14 a kilo. “Itong rice (smuggled) from Visayas and Mindanao hindi na dumadating sa Luzon. Nahinto natin. So malaking bagay iyang price dati ng palay na hindi bumagsak ng katorse at ma-maintain din sa P17,” he said.
He said the party also forays in the villages in Metro Manila by talking with political leaders there so they can help sway more vote for Abono. “The mayors and barangay leaders there promised to deliver votes for us. Each barangay there has 75 thousand to 80 thousand population. So iyon ang tinitingnan natin,” he said. So was in the media limelight lately when he exposed the patent P32 billion a year smuggling of farm products under the noses of Bureau of Custom’s commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon whom he asked to resign. So expose’ shook the BOC after Ramon S. Ang, chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Petron Corporation, unmasked that P30 billion petroleum products illegally entered the country that deprived the nation coffer with much needed revenues.

The partylist system, a form of proportional representation in which voters choose among parties rather than among candidates, was introduced by the 1987 Constitution ostensibly to create a healthy democracy by increasing representation of so-called “marginalized and under-represented” sectors.

Twenty percent of the total number of seats in the House of Representatives are reserved for party-list groups.

In April 2009, the Supreme Court introduced the Carpio formula for the computation of the winners for party-list seats in the House.

Under the formula, groups receiving 2 percent of the votes cast to party-list groups will receive seats in proportion to the votes they receive, up to a maximum of three.

In the next round of seat allocation, the percentage of votes is multiplied by the number of remaining seats, determining the additional slots to be awarded.

Finally, the parties next in rank are given one seat each until all the slots are filled.

Based on the survey results, 33 party-list groups could fill the remaining seats, getting one seat each.