Picking off from my commentary piece for Philippine Online Chronicles.
The logic of the Commission on Elections Second Division is one that comes straight off Planet Eksprokenengneng: that Ang Ladlad’s motion to be registered as a party-list group for the 2010 polls should be denied based on moral grounds. Had the grounds for denying and failing the petition been (more) legal, (more) Constitutional, and deemed acceptable based on the universal right of suffrage and freedom of assembly, then there would not have been outrage.
The Comelec positioned itself, in this case, not as an arbiter of the right to suffrage and representation, but an arbiter of morals. The precinct became a pulpit, the Second Division became a confessional box, and Nicodemo Ferrer, Lucienito Tagle, and Elias Yousoph overstepped their bounds to dictate morality: what they say is right, and what they say is wrong.
Party-list representation – that mechanism by which the marginalized should be represented based on the will of the people and the strength of the cause manifested in the vote – became, in this case, a moral litmus test.
