1978 Philippine parliamentary election

The Philippines had been under martial law since 1972, with incumbent president Ferdinand Marcos ruling by decree. Prior to this, the Constitution of the Philippines was being drafted by the Constitutional Convention, whose delegates were elected in 1970. The Constitutional Convention approved the final draft of the constitution, which consisted of the abolition of the Philippine Congress and its replacement with an interim National Assembly consisting of the President, the Vice-President, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in November 1972 and was later ratified on January 17, 1973, through so-called "citizens' assemblies". The Constitution was amended twice, on July 27–28, 1973 and February 27–28, 1975. The Constitution was amended once again on October 16–17, 1976 with the passage of "Amendment No. 6", which changed the name of the Interim National Assembly into the "Interim Batasang Pambansa", more commonly as the "Batasan".

The Batasang Pambansa has not more than 200 members, of which there are 190 seats for this election, of which 166 are elected via multi-member districts via plurality block vote, similar to the Philippine Senate elections in the past. Each region corresponds to a parliamentary district, with the number of seats dependent on the region's population.

An additional 14 members are reserved for sectoral seats. There are three sectors: agricultural labor, industrial labor, and youth, each having 1 seat each from Visayas and Mindanao, 2 seats for Luzon, and the youth sector having an additional 2 seats elected at-large. The seats are determined by electoral college within each sector, with the electoral colleges voting via first-past-the-post system.

Finally, the president may choose members of the Cabinet to be members.

In 1978, former Senators Gerry Roxas and Jovito Salonga opted for the opposition Liberal Party boycott the elections. Having initially agreed to the boycott due to "the government already [having] the forces in its command and the entire machinery of politics which [they] do not have", former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. later changed his mind and opted to take part in the elections to have the chance to "talk to the people," having been imprisoned for almost six (6) years.^[1]

Aquino was then able to field twenty other candidates for the seats in Region IV-A (Metro Manila) under a big tent political party, dubbed Lakas ng Bayan ("People's Power"). The party's acronym was "LABAN" ("fight" in Tagalog).

On March 10, 1978, he was entitled to one television interview on GTV's Face the Nation (hosted by Ronnie Nathanielsz) in his prison at Fort Bonifacio, and proved to a startled and impressed populace that imprisonment had neither dulled his rapier-like tongue nor dampened his fighting spirit.^[2] According to Aquino, he wanted to give the people a vehicle to express their frustration or their anger "if there is any," while recognizing that should all twenty-one opposition candidates win, as they are a still minority in the Batasan, "the only job in this particular combat now is fiscalization... Mr. Marcos will profound the thesis of government, we will supply the antithesis so that in the clash of ideas, the people will have the synthesis."^[1]

On April 6, 1978, the eve of elections, supporters of the Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN) came out in protest by asking bystanders and cars to make noise in support the opposition.^[3]

President Marcos created the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (New Society Movement) as his political vehicle for the elections.

Party		Votes	%	Seats
	Kilusang Bagong Lipunan	147,885,493	71.13	137
	Lakas ng Bayan	21,541,600	10.36	0
	Pusyon Bisaya	9,495,416	4.57	13
	Bagong Lipunan-Kilusan ng Nagkakaisang Nacionalista, Liberal	7,981,060	3.84	14
	Mindanao Alliance	6,685,224	3.22	1
	Bicol Saro	2,105,599	1.01	0
	Young Philippines	1,471,381	0.71	0
	Concerned Citizens' Aggrupation	1,374,549	0.66	0
	Nacionalista Party	688,130	0.33	0
	Emancipated Scientists	392,819	0.19	0
	Partido ng Bagong Pilipino	140,365	0.07	0
	Democratic Party	112,140	0.05	0
	Philippine Labor Party	94,287	0.05	0
	Confederation of Ilocano Associations	81,594	0.04	0
	Consumers Party	69,216	0.03	0
	Citizens Union Progress Party	44,893	0.02	0
	Youth Democratic Movement	40,571	0.02	0
	Sovereign Citizens Party	18,814	0.01	0
	Partido Sambayanang Pilipino	15,050	0.01	0
	Lapiang Bagong Silang	11,457	0.01	0
	Bagong Anyo ng Buhay	11,190	0.01	0
	Independent	7,633,851	3.67	1
Sectoral seats				14
Appointed seats				10
Total		207,894,699	100.00	190
Registered voters/turnout		21,464,213	85.52
Source: Nohlen, Grotz, Hartmann, Graham and Santos[4] and Teehankee[5]

A separate election was held for the 14 members of the Batasang Pambansa's sectoral representatives.

This was via electoral college, with youth, industrial labor and agricultural labor as the three sectors. Each sector shall elect among themselves an electoral council, the members coming from provinces and cities. Each electoral council elected two members from Luzon, and a member each from Visayas and Mindanao, with two additional seats from the youth sector elected at-large, for a total of 14 seats.^[6]

Marcos said that fraud was committed by "both sides" during the elections, but not on a scale that would have affected the results.^[7] Jovito Salonga disagreed with the assessment and said that he did not observe people celebrating KBL’s victory because they felt "like they’ve been cheated."^[7]

• Commission on Elections
• Politics of the Philippines
• Philippine elections
• Interim Batasang Pambansa

• Philippine Commission on Elections — Records and Statistics Division
• Philippine House of Representatives Congressional Library
• Pobre, Cesar P. (2000). Philippine Legislature 100 Years. ISBN 971-92245-0-9.
• Machado, Kit G. (February 1979). "The Philippines 1978: Authoritarian Consolidation Continues". Asian Survey. 19 (2): 131–140. doi:10.2307/2643779. JSTOR 2643779.
• "The first election". Martial Law Museum. Retrieved June 3, 2021.

• Official website of the Commission on Elections