Teachers urge COMELEC to accredit ACT as partylist

Militant teachers today trooped to the Commission on Elections main office in Manila to urge the poll body to allow a teachers’ partylist group to run in the May 2010 elections.

Around 100 teachers held a brief demonstration and called on the COMELEC to accredit ACT Teachers Partylist. Last Friday, the COMELEC First Division headed by Commissioner Rene Sarmiento issued an 8-page resolution denying the petition for accreditation of ACT Teachers Partylist, claiming that it made untruthful statements in its petition regarding the extent of its membership. According to the COMELEC, its field offices reported that ACT Teachers Partylist does not exist in the majority of regions in the country.

ACT Teachers Partylist officials led by its president Antonio Tinio and secretary-general April Valentin Montes, together with their legal counsel Atty. Alnie G. Foja, then proceeded to the COMELEC’s Commission Secretariat to file a Motion for Reconsideration of their petition.

“The First Division’s decision is most unfortunate,” said Tinio. “There are no untruthful statements in our petition. How could they conclude that we don’t have a nationwide constituency? It appears that they simply overlooked the copious lists of names and addresses of officers and members of ACT Teachers Partylist in eleven of the country’s 18 regions that we submitted together with our original petition.” Tinio added that their partlylist has regional, provincial, city, and municipal chapters in the Cordillera Administrative Region, National Capital Region, Regions 2, 3, 4-A, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12. “For this Motion for Reconsideration, we are submitting an even more voluminous compilation of lists of chapters, officers, and members together with affidavits and other documents attesting to our organization’s existence in these regions.”

ACT Teachers Partylist has more than fulfilled all the requirements for registration demanded by the partylist law. There should be no reason for the COMELEC to deny this motion for reconsideration,” said Atty. Foja.

“It would be a grave injustice to the sector of teachers and education workers if our partylist is not allowed to in the 2010 elections,” said Montes. “The sector has been clamoring for genuine representation in Congress, something which our party can provide, grounded in the solid track record of ACT in upholding and advancing teachers’ rights.”

ACT Teachers Partylist and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers are calling on their members nationwide to hold dialogues and mass delegations in the COMELEC offices in their localities and to barrage the COMELEC national office with telephone calls, texts, faxes, and emails calling for the accreditation of ACT Teachers Partylist.

Tinio noted that a delegation trooped to the COMELEC regional office in Iloilo yesterday, and that similar actions will also take place in Bacolod , Cebu, and Davao today. “We will keep up the public pressure until our petition is granted,” said Tinio. #