Chel Diokno set to enter Congress as Akbayan leads party-list race

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Akbayan Citizens' Action Party's win marks human rights lawyer Chel Diokno's first successful bid for public office after two failed Senate runs

MANILA, Philippines – Human rights lawyer Chel Diokno is finally set to join Congress as Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party, which lists him as top nominee, leads the 2025 party-list race.

Diokno will take one of the party’s assured slots at the House of Representatives. Top-performing party-list groups are given the maximum three seats. Akbayan’s second and third nominees are Percival Cendaña and Haima Kiram Ismula, respectively.

Akbayan has received at least 2,686,579 votes or 6.72% of votes counted so far, with 76.11% precincts reporting as of 11:24 pm on May 12. A close second is Duterte Youth with 2,242,440 votes.

A party-list group must secure at least 2% of the total votes to be guaranteed a seat in Congress. The Commission on Elections (Comelec), however, may allocate seats to groups that fall below this threshold, in order to fill the 20% quota of party-list representation in the House.

The 2025 results mark Diokno’s first successful bid for public office after two failed Senate runs. He finished the 2019 race at 21st spot and the 2022 race at 19th spot. He joined Akbayan only in September 2023 in a move he called a “principled decision” after foregoing another Senate campaign.

Diokno, son of the late statesman Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno, chairs the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), an organization of lawyers assisting human rights activists and journalists, among others, since its creation in 1974. It has been at the forefront of legally challenging Rodrigo Duterte’s violent war on drugs before the Supreme Court.

Akbayan was once a consistent voice in the House after securing seats in every Congress since 1998. It, however, was shut out of the party-list system after suffering losses in 2019 and 2022. The group’s highest-ranking elected official is Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is currently on her second term and is seen as the lone legitimate opposition in the Senate.

But Akbayan’s performance in the 2025 elections is a far cry from what happened in the past. In the 2022 elections, the party-list group ranked 57th spot with only 236,226 votes. In 2019, it only received 173,356 votes.

Akbayan only secured a seat under the 19th Congress in September 2024 after the Comelec canceled the registration of An Waray, which had allowed its second nominee to assume office in 2013 without a certificate of proclamation. An Waray had ranked 27th among the 56 party-list groups that initially won seats in the 2022 elections.

The cancellation of its registration allowed Akbayan — previously at the 57th spot in the 2022 elections — to move up and clinch the final seat.

Check real-time results below:

– Rappler.com