78 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy issues that have not been well addressed in existing studies about the PL system.32 The first major issue about the PL system is how strictly the government will implement the Supreme Court ruling (Bayan Muna vs. Comelec) that only citizens belonging to “marginalized and underrepresented” sectors, organizations and parties shall be allowed in the PL election. In practice, however, the Comelec has exercised a lot of leeway in implementing the law and has allowed the participation of several parties and individuals whose credentials will not pass a strict rendering of the court's ruling. Alarmed by this development, former Supreme Court Chief Justice, Reynato Puno, asserted in his concurring and dissenting opinion in Banat vs Comelec, BM et al vs Comelec, that allowing major political parties to participate in the party list process “will surely suffocate the voice of the marginalized, frustrate their sovereignty, and betray the democratic spirit of the constitution” (cited in Tuazon 2011: 25). The actual implementation of the PL system has resulted in an extreme fragmentation of the political parties running under this system. This has exacerbated the problems of a divided government and the aggregation of interests in a presidential system with weak parties to begin with. The PL law elects candidates under a system of proportional representation but imposes at the same time a 3-seat cap and a 2 percent minimum vote threshold for winning candidates. To fill up the constitutionally mandated 20 percent seats in the House of Representatives for PL parties, the Supreme Court decision on April 21, 2009 (Banat vs. Comelec, BM et al vs Comelec) declared as unconstitutional the two percent threshold in the distribution of additional party list seats but retained the three-seat cap for each winning party. The Supreme Court justifies the retention of the three-seat cap as a “valid statutory device that prevents any party from dominating the party list elections” but this fear has no empirical basis. For instance, in the last four elections , no party has received more than 11 percent of the total votes cast for the party list as shown in the following results by first ranked parties: 2001, Bayan Muna, 11%; 2004, Bayan Muna, 9%; 2007, BUHAY, 7%; and 2010, AKO Bicol Political Party, 4%. Moreover, the aggregate votes cast for the single largest bloc of party list organizations (Makabayan) comprising Bayan Muna, Anak Pawis, Gabriela, Kabataan , and Act Teachers also do not exceed 10 percent of the total votes cast for the PL system. But at the same time, parties that do well in the party list system are always penalized by the three-seat cap, a clear violation of the principle of proportional representation which is recognized as one of the “four inviolable parameters of the Philippine party list system”. What are the effects of these rules on interest representation and party formation?