Reform and Abolition: The Philippine Party-list System 187 The entry of political families, traditional politicians, and non-marginalized members in the lower House's Party-list system has become a major concern not only among Party-list groups that consider themselves to be representing marginalized sectors but also by the country's civil society, academic circles, and policy research groups. The issue has occupied a major agenda of CenPEG's assessment of the 12-year Party list system ending in 2010.2 The movement to preserve the Party-list system and ensure that it represents the marginalized and underrepresented sectors – a major post-EDSA I reform advocacy – has been sustained through various Congresses. Protecting the original Party-list vision from the incursions of political families gained support with the push for the enactment of an anti-dynasty law as envisioned in the 1987 Constitution amid the restoration of Congress in the same year. This struggle had to be waged in Congress, Comelec, Supreme Court, as well as in the parliament of the streets. The reform initiatives had obtained mixed results if not utter failure, however. Party-list amendments in Congress From the 11th to 16th Congress, 30 bills were led in the lower House seeking to amend the Party-List System Act and 20 of these were principally authored by PL representatives. Of these, several bills were led to reserve the Party-list system exclusively to the marginalized as ruled by the SC in Bayan Muna vs Comelec, to remove the three-seat cap, and exclude major political parties and non-marginalized groups from participating (HB 04370, BM Rep. Satur Ocampo; HB 00409, Roseller Barinaga; HB 04464, BM Rep. Neri Colmenares). Other bills sought the denition of “marginalized” in law (HB 00617, Mariano Piamonte, ACT Teacher), raising the seat cap to 6 or 10 (HB 01767, Risa Hontiveros, HB 04157, Walden Bello), and make the 20% seat allocation mandatory (HB 12464, Jaime Jacob). Other bills aimed to amend the PL seat allocation using a number of formulas to approximate better an authentic proportional representation election system and ensure broader seat allocation for PL representatives.3 None of the House bills was enacted into law, however. Explaining the nonpassage of initial amendatory House bills in 2007, then Rep. Teodoro Locsin, Jr., in a hearing of the Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, took to task the Senate for misconstruing that the upper House must have a counterpart version of the House bill. Locsin said: “In fact, they don't. If there is a House version they either accept or reject it and come up with their own. That misconception doomed the bill on both occasions.”4 Another reason for the failure to pass the House bills is the lack of political clout of the Party-list representatives in Congress especially since most of the proposed amendments were meant to enhance the marginalized representation and exclude the participation of mainstream political parties that are a dominant force in the lower House. Thus, Party-list representatives striving to reform the system of representation are caught in a bind. But as BM Rep. Neri Colmenares said in a