PHILIPPINES: Party-list Legislators Often Forgotten in Poll By Lynette Lee Corporal* MANILA, Apr 2, 2010 (Asia Media Forum) - Second-class legislators. A different political species in the Philippines’ rough-and-tumble - and very personalistic - brand of electoral politics. All of these capture a bit of what a party-list member of the House of Representatives is, 12 years after elections began to be held for slots that were meant to allow representation of groups like fishers, migrant workers, veterans, women, urban poor and others that would otherwise have a hard time getting into public office. The election of party-list legislators was meant to counter the elitist and often corrupt system of district-level politics, where candidates with money, name and fame – sometimes all in the same clans -- often provided people tickets to power. Indeed, the number of party-list congressional representatives has grown over the years and they occupy 52 of the 269 House seats today in this South-e...

by Danton Remoto www.abs-cbnnews.com The following is my introduction to Ladlad 3: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing, edited by J. Neil Garcia and myself (Anvil Publishing). It is now flying off the shelves of National Book Store and Power Books. Three days of the week, I teach English at the Ateneo, telling my students “sematary” should be “cemetery,” “high school” is spelled two words, and that even if I wrote an erotic poem in their Filipino textbook Hulagpos, I was not, am not, and will never be the persona sitting on another man’s lap in that scandalous poem. I am also taking my last three exams for my Ph.D. in English at the University of the Philippines. And once a week, I have my political meetings. It is on a day like this, on a fine Saturday afternoon, that I am going to the Manila Yacht Club for my next political meeting. When Ang Ladlad, our lesbian-gay-transgender-bisexual (LGBT) political party filed our papers for accreditation in the party-list elections for May 14...