Philippine parliamentary election, 1978

← 1969

April 7 and 27, 1978

1984 →

179 (of the 189) seats in the Interim Batasang Pambansa
95 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party
		PB	MA
Leader	Ferdinand Marcos	Hilario Davide, Jr.	Reuben Canoy
Party	KBL	Pusyon Bisaya	Mindanao Alliance
Leader's seat	none	Region VII	Region X
Last election	new party	new party	new party
Seats won	150	13	1
Seat change	150	13	1
Popular vote	155,866,553	9,495,416	6,685,224
Percentage	74.97%	4.57%	3.22%

	Fourth party	Fifth party
	KB
Leader	Ernesto Roldan	Benigno Aquino, Jr.
Party	Independent / Konsensiya ng Bayan	LABAN
Leader's seat	Region XII	Region IV-A (lost)
Last election	new party	new party
Seats won	1	0
Seat change	1
Popular vote	7,633,851	21,541,600
Percentage	3.67%	10.36%

Prime Minister-designate

Ferdinand Marcos
KBL

A general election was held in the Philippines on April 7, 1978 for the election of the 165 regional representatives to the Interim Batasang Pambansa (the nation's first parliament). The elections were participated by the leading opposition party, the Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN) which had twenty-one candidates for the Metro Manila area and the leading candidate was the jailed opposition leader Ninoy Aquino while the regime's party known as the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) which was led by the then First Lady Imelda Marcos. Ninoy was allowed to run by the his fellow party mates in the Liberal Party who boycotted the elections but was not allowed to campaign, so his family campaigned for him. The night before the elections on April 6, 1978, a noise barrage was organized by the supporters of (LABAN) which occurred up to dawn.

These elections were followed by the sectoral election on April 27 which elected additional 14 representatives. Another 10 representatives were appointed, bring up the total representatives to 189.

The Philippines was under martial law since 1972, thereby the incumbent president Ferdinand Marcos ruled 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 replaced with an interim National Assembly to consisted of the President, the Vice-President, the President of the Constitutional Convention and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives in November 1972 and later ratified on January 17, 1973 through so-called "citizens' assemblies". The Constitution were amended twice in July 27–28, 1973 and February 27–28, 1975. The Constitution was amended once again in October 16–17, 1976 which contained the "Amendment No. 6" which changed the name of the interim National Assembly from the "National Assembly" to "Batasang Pambansa" more commonly as the "Batasan".

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