More than half of party-lists seeking seats at the House of Representatives do not represent marginalized sectors, a study released by a poll watchdog found.
Kontra Daya, citing its study released on 12 February, flagged seven party-list groups leading in the December 2024 and January 2025 surveys by the Social Weather Stations for being linked to political clans, big businesses or the police/military: 4PS, ACT-CIS, Duterte Youth, Ako Bicol, FPJ Bantay Bayanihan, Tingog Sinirangan and TGP.
"Political dynasties appear to dominate 4PS (Abalos), ACT-CIS (Tulfo and Yap), FPJ Bantay Bayan (Poe Llamanzares with Dolor and Paton families) and Tingog Sinirangan (Romualdez)," the watchdog noted.
"Big business interests are apparent in Ako Bicol (Sunwest) and TGP (Teravera; contractor of Department of Public Works and Highways projects). Duterte Youth has military connections which explains its track record for red- tagging," it added.
Those are among the 86 party-list groups flagged by Kontra Daya.
Aside from the three reasons, the other grounds for flagging are cases connected to pork barrel/plunder/graft and corruption; dubious advocacy; and not enough information.
"Given that there are 156 party-list groups participating in the 2025 polls, it appears that 55.13% of those running do not represent the marginalized and underrepresented, especially in the case of those linked with political clans and big businesses," it furthered.
Among the more than 1,500 party-list nominees, Kontra Daya said Tingog Sinirangan "deserves close scrutiny for being linked with the Romualdez clan to which the current House Speaker belongs."
"ACT-CIS is also an interesting case study of how the Tulfo political clan has managed to invade not just the Senate but also the House of Representatives, aside from an appointed Cabinet position," the watchdog noted.
"The profiles of ACT-CIS party-list nominees show how the Tulfos control the group in partnership with the Yap dynasty," it added.
Based on Kontra Daya’s monitoring, there are also cases of party-list nominees providing limited information in the forms they submitted to the Commission on Elections.
"They did not provide specific details on the nature of their work, preferring to give only general details," Kontra Daya said.
"It is also possible for members of political clans (including incumbent party-list representatives) to be listed not in the top three nominees but in the bottom numbers," it added.
With that, the Kontra Daya reminded voters to scrutinize all 10 party-list nominees and not just the three, or the maximum seats that party-list groups can get.