The Party List System Is A Waste Of Money

The Party list system was originally conceived as a way to represent minority groups in the congress. The basic idea is that the system is a way of ensuring that those special-interest groups that genuinely require a say, but aren't really localized to a certain region to finally get a chance to have their voice in the congress.

Of course, that's on paper, without taking into account that Filipinos are one of the most politically devious creatures to walk the earth. If it can be exploited, it's all fair game.

Just think about it. Where are the Mangyans Aetas and other minority tribes in the party lists? They're not there. On the other hand, the current roster is filled party lists with ever ambiguous constituents, and easily neither minority nor critically important as far as representation is concerned. Here are a few examples:

Buhay Hayaan Yumabong - BUHAY, A party List representing Life. And while in the history of the Philippines it's understandable that there are more dead Filipinos than those that are currently alive, I don't think the dead people will ever care about the current issues, on account that they are in fact dead and buried somewhere underground.

Gabriela Women's Party - Party List representing Women, a sector representing pretty much 50% of the ENTIRE POPULATION, which is to say anything but minority. The only way this can be justified if we had a Men's Party, and if we call them the Mamamayang Against Corrupt Habang Opisyal (MACHO)

Citizen's Against Corruption - Yet another party list stemming from a religious group, claiming to represent citizens who are against corruption, which to my knowledge, should be about 95% of taxpayers, and pretty much anybody who understands the fact that stealing from the citizens is wrong. Minority? I don't think so buddy.

Bayan Muna - Represents the poor, the masses, the women, and the children. I really don't know about you, but I think the whole "We represent everybody" defeats the idea of representation in the first place. And unless the representatives are poor little girls who happen to be farmers, this party is just mooching off tax money.

Those are just a few. Admittedly there are in fact other parties that have genuine representations. But still.

In the upcoming elections, an even more numerous amount of party lists have joined in, in true spirit of the Filipino "Oh WOW THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT. WE SHOULD TOO" tradition. Even more useless, purposeless, and shady parties have entered the fray, and I won't even go to the whole backdoor Arroyo invasion plan issue here. As a result, we have a ballot that looks a papyrus scroll of the dead, and we have to do a lot more shading than what God would have expected us to.

And here's yet another more annoying fact: Since the list is alphabetically arranged, in true "Wais" fashion, almost all party lists are now named with a letter A at the start, or for 1-Utaks case, even a number. I dread to see the day one of our congress representatives will have a name that starts with an asterisk. Those that couldnt find a good word that starts with A contented themselves with adding the prefix ANG. If we can't even trust these fuckers to fall in line properly, how can we trust them to work for us?

Bottomline? The Party List System is not working, it never worked and it will never work. I say scrap it and let's waste the surplus tax we get in free beers for everybody.

Jay Sonza: Patron Saint of Hopeful Idiots

This post is a tribute to Jay Sonza, who by my standards is the one politician who manages to stand out by not actually standing out. In my opinion, he is the true Filipino politician, the representative of the real Filipino.

• Hindi galing sa mahirap, pero mahirap sumuko.


• Hindi nangangakong hindi magnanakaw, pero parang sa sobrang nakakaawa, pagbibigyan mo na rin kumupit kahit onti lang.


• Hindi suportado ng administrasyon, kaya salat sa budget pambili ng peluka.


• Walang seksing first lady, at mukhang hindi na talaga sila magkakatuluyan ni Mel Tianco (sorry to hear that)

Yan si Jay Sonza.

Seriously though. What drives a man who's lead a seemingly successful career in one profession to wake up one morning and say "I'd like to do something different today." and completely go do a 180 degree turn and head for another field where he routinely shits himself and throws away what dignity he saved up all the years of his life?

The man anchored for a really good talk show, when him and Mel still had a good thing going, and he's a broadcast manager for a channel, albeit a somewhat obscure one. The man had a show called PINOY SCANDAL for fucks sake. Any show named after a porn site should be something to watch. Think about that, man. Think about that. (I'm not kidding. Check Wikipedia.)

6 years ago, probably out of shock from the Mel and Jay breakup, Jay Sonza finally broke his greymatter flask and gunned for senator, despite the fact that we only know him as "that" guy Mel Tianco always hangs out with, and ended up as the 41st out of 45 candidates, presumably beating three other candidates that may or may not actually be placeholder pieces of vegetables, and not real people. He did not even garner a top 20 spot in his own FUCKING HOMETOWN. I'm not sure about benchmarking popularity, but if you can't get even your own uncles to vote for you, you got some serious issues to work out.

Fast forward to now, Jay is once again trying to break into the scene (and hilariously). Figuring the only reason he failed before is that he was trying to get elected to a too low position, he aimed for the highest possible position in the land that allows you to be completely lazy and still post a good resume entry for it - Vice President. (Because let's face it, President-in-case-shit isn't exactly demanding, granted the president doesn't die. And since we haven't had a mabait-kaya-kinuha-ni-Lord president since Magsaysay, every VP since has been utterly useless)

Jay is seemingly blindly wandering through the sea of turmoil that is the campaign period without so much as a clue as to how the fuck he can win a vice presidential race - but none of that seems to faze our guy.

Asked in an interview on how he hopes to win, Jay is silently assuming that all those undecided votes are actually just secretly pining for him, coming out during the election day like ninjas that will break everybody's expectations in two.

Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but the jist is basically the same.

Jay Sonza - helpless, but never hopeless.