MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday criticized the country's elite for using the party-list system to get them elected to the House of Representatives.

"Until the end of my day, I would continue to criticize and say something about itong mga party-lists. Ito ay ginagamit ng mga mayayaman, ng mga negosyante. Either binili nila ang party-list or nag-create sila because they can do it with their money," Duterte said in a public briefing.

"Fractured na tayo. It's a fractured Constitution. Biro mo, who allowed this, itong ganitong party-list (system)?"

However, Duterte said party-list representatives are "OK" and some of them are his friends.

"But, alam mo, that friendship cannot be used to even say something good what the communists are doing, including their legal friends," he said.

The President has accused some of left-leaning or progressive party-lists as legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing New People's Army.

Election watchdog Kontra Daya said earlier this month that 120 out of 177 party-list groups were "identified with political clans and big businesses, as well as for having incumbent local officials, connections with the government and military, unknown or unclear advocacies and representations; and pending court cases and criminal charges."

• Party-list system, to abolish or not? Election experts weigh in

Poll expert Emil Marañon said that a confluence of factors – including a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that made it possible for non-members of marginalized sectors to represent organizations allowed to run as party-list groups – led to the system's current state.

Marañon and other experts have urged Congress to review the 1995 Party-List System Law, along with members of the academe and other sectors, to fix its flaws.

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