Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal is calling President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to veto another measure by the 19th Congress seeking to again postpone by a year the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections which are scheduled for December this year.
The enrolled bill, which seeks to give BSK officials a term of four years, which is longer than those of congressmen and elected local government executives.
Macalintal’s petition against the postponement of the BSKE in 2022 was granted by the Supreme Court, which in its ruling, said that prolonged postponements of the BSKE, which effectively gave BSK officials a term extension of at least a year, were “unduly arbitrary or oppressive of the electorate’s right of suffrage.”
In declaring the law postponing the BSKE unconstitutional, the SC found “no legitimate government interest of objective” to support the measure. The Commission on Elections has also cited the billions of pesos of additional expenses to taxpayers each time the BSKE is postponed for a prolonged period.
Macalintal pointed out that the same arguments were being trotted out in the latest bill, backed by mostly the same lawmakers who have repeatedly pushed for BSKE postponements.
With the SC already having issued a ruling declaring that such prolonged postponements violate the constitutionally guaranteed right of suffrage, the president should uphold the constitution with a veto of the bill that only benefits a select few who get a free pass to extend their stay in power.
The barangay is supposed to be the basic unit of governance. Why its elected leaders do not get a fixed term of office and regularly scheduled elections is a mystery that the current officials who are in a position to do something about it have to solve and rectify as soon as possible. It starts with a veto of the bill that seeks to postpone the BSKE yet again.*
