Philippine Congress Timeline

I present to you one of my projects: the Philippine Congress Timeline.

Philippine Congress Timeline (File size: 8.43 MB)

The timeline lists in chronological order every Senator elected to the Senate since 1916, and every Representative elected to the House of Representatives since 1907. It includes Assemblymen of the unicameral National Assembly (1935-41) during the Commonwealth Period, and of the National Assembly of the Second Republic (1943-44) during the Japanese occupation. Also in the timeline are members of the Interim Batasang Pambansa (1978-84) and the Regular Batasang Pambansa (1984-86), parliaments during the Marcos administration.

It also shows the history of each legislative district in the Philippines. The districts are grouped by island group (Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao), and then arranged by province in alphabetical order. Some provinces and cities in the timeline are associated with their “mother province” or “mother district” (where the district was originally part of in 1907), for presentation purposes. Leyte and Cebu had district reorganization (in 1961 and 1987, resp.), thus explaining the apparent “change of district numbers” in the said provinces.

There is also a timeline of former and current sectoral representatives. Sectoral representation in the Philippines was introduced in the Interim Batasang Pambansa in 1978. There have been only four former district representatives in history who were later elected as sectoral representatives (Luis Taruc, Salvador Britanico, Patricio Antonino, and Juan Miguel Arroyo).

Below the senators timeline, and between the district and sectoral timelines are Congress statistics, such as the number of new, re-elected, and returning Senators and Congressmen. There have been 237 Senators and 2,239 Representatives in Philippine history.

You can observe the prevalence of “political dynasties” in some provinces here in this timeline.

Legend:

• cells with yellow fill are two-term legislators; cells with orange fill are three-termers; cells with blue fill are four-termers; cells with green fill are legislators serving for five or more consecutive terms
• cells with gray fill represent transitions between two representatives, due to the first one’s death, resignation or appointment to another post
• names set in green text are “returning legislators”
• names set in blue underlined text are Representatives later elected to Senate

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The Philippine Congress Timeline is a result of nearly 15 months of researching, collecting, plotting, and verifying data from various sources:

• Wikipedia pages of all legislative districts in the Philippines
• Wikipedia pages of all Philippine Senate elections
• List of Previous Senators, in the official website of the Philippine Senate
• the Online Roster of Philippine Legislators, in the official website of the House of Representatives (thank God for this!)

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The Excel file of the Philippine Congress Timeline is available by request. For a copy of the file, please reply to this blog with your e-mail address, or send an e-mail to michaelbueza@gmail.com.