(So far no party-list representative has communicated with me or this paper to refute the points I raised in that column.) A third type of “party-list representatives” are those who represent no marginalized sector but merely a political clan controlling a territory. Such local bosses exploiting the party-list system aren’t just in far-away provinces. For his clan to get another seat in Congress, Belmonte got his nephew Ricardo (“RJ”) Belmonte to be party-list representative. To have another Garin in the House, Janette’s sister-in-law Sharon is party-list representative of AAMBIS-OWA, acronym for the Visayan “Association of Visayan Workers and OFWs’.

Source: Manila Times February 11, 2018 18:00 UTC