In Search of Credible Elections and Parties: The Philippine Paradox 79 From the point of view of representation, it appears that a wider set of interests are indeed represented in the PL system but this practice also magnifies the problem of too many particularistic and narrow interests being represented with no established mechanism for aggregating such interests. An examination of the parties running under the PL system reveals a bewildering array of organizations representing diverse interests including mainly ethnic and religious concerns and all kinds of fly-by-night dummy organizations opportunistically set up by powerful vested interests to win congressional seats. In fact, these narrow interest groups undermine the legitimacy of the truly programmatic parties running under this list which could gain more seats and exert a stronger impact on the legislative process in a truly proportional system of voting without seat caps. Thus, the current PL system has actually aggravated the problem of multipartism in presidential systems which could accentuate “immobilism” in the relationship between the executive and legislature or result in “purely opportunistic negotiated deals, wheeling and dealing, legislative log-rolling, etc.”(Sartori 1997). In short, the PL system as it has actually been implemented has resulted in a false sense of democratic representation which may in fact further strengthen presidential powers at the expense of the legislature. If a PL system with proportional representation (PR) is to be combined with presidentialism, already a problem by itself, it would be better to abide by the strict logic of the PR system of election by doing away with the seat caps but retaining a reasonable minimum winning threshold to control the excessive party fragmentation at work in the present system. Side by side with these reforms, it is also worthwhile looking into the possibility of increasing the seats allocated for the party list system to help balance the entrenched oligarchic power of the dominant political families in Congress. These rules would be an incentive for the programmatic parties representing broader interests as they can win more seats proportional to their actual strength while discouraging those identified with the narrowest interests and constituencies. Conclusion With its long and continuing history of electoral violence and coercion , fraud and manipulation, and poor electoral governance, elections in the Philippines can hardly qualify as “free, fair, and competitive” processes, widely seen as necessary for any successful democratization. Through a confluence of deep socio-economic structural problems and politicalinstitutional infirmities, the country has also entrenched through its electoral exercises, an oligarchy of powerful political families, remarkable for their