IFES Election Guide - Country Profile: Philippines

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Presidential
May 2016

Philippines
Republic of the Philippines
Region: Asia & Pacific

Description of government structure:

Chief of State: President Benigno Simeon AQUINO III *
Head of Government: President Benigno Simeon AQUINO III
Assembly: Philippines has a bicameral Congress (Kongreso) consisting of the Senate (Senado) with 24 seats and the House of Representatives (Kapulungan Ng Mga Kinatawan) with 287 seats.

* The president is both chief of state and head of government.

Description of electoral system:

The President is elected by plurality vote to serve a 6-year term.
In the Senate (Senado) 24 members are elected by plurality vote in multi-member constituencies to serve 6-year terms*. In the House of Representatives (Kapulungan Ng Mga Kinatawan), 230 members are elected by plurality vote in single-member constituencies to serve 3-year terms and 57 members are elected through a closed-list proportional representation system to serve 3-year terms.**

* One-half of members are elected every three years. There is one national constituency. Senators are elected at-large from the country. Electors may vote up to 12 times.

** Under constitutional provisions, the PR tier must comprise 20 percent of total seats. While the constitution provides for a 250-member House, it also permits the legislature to change that size. Numbers above reflect the current apportionment. In the PR tier, members generally represent special "sectoral" minorities, though this constitutional provision was set to expire after three terms from 1987. (The 1987 constitution reserved half of these seats to said groups.) Under a 2009 court ruling related to the 2007 legislative elections, a party represented in one tier may not hold seats in the other, effectively reserving all PR seats to minor parties. The threshold in the PR tier is 2 percent, but no party may hold more than three seats in it. Prior to the 2009 ruling, elections would not necessarily fill all PR seats.