Up next for Comelec: Barangay polls

MANILA, Philippines — Even if the smoke from the May 13 midterm polls has not yet cleared, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is now gearing up for the conduct of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) polls next year.

According to Comelec spokesman James Jimenez, they are already planning for the village and youth polls, which will be held in 2020 as provided for under Republic Act 10952.

“This means that (after the midterm elections), our jobs continue,” he said. 

The law postponed the Oct. 23, 2017 barangay and SK elections to the second Monday of May 2018.  It also stated that the twin polls be held on the second May of 2020, giving the winning candidates only a two-year term.

After next year’s elections, the term of office of winning bets will be back to three years.

But while the Comelec is preparing for the next polls, two of its commissioners, Luie Tito Guia and Al Parreno, are set to retire in February 2020. This movement, Jimenez noted, will be part of the adjustments the body has to make before the synchronized elections. 

Jimenez also said that the Comelec is yet to determine whether or not to create a body that will investigate the technical glitches that occurred during the last election. He hopes that a decision will be reached when the poll agency conducts its post-election evaluation of the midterm polls. 

“We will be discussing that in post evaluation. We’ll find out, I guess, at the first instance…if there will be a third party investigation, I don’t know yet,” he added.  

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church-based election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said, on the 12th day since starting to encode and validate the election returns (ERs), they have already received 73.51 percent or 63,053 of the total number of ERs.

The group expects to receive a total of 85,769 of the fourth copy of the pre-transmitted ERs.  

The PPCRV Command Center at Pope Pius XII Catholic Center along UN Avenue, Manila started receiving copies of the ERs last May 14, a day after the elections. Most of the first to arrive came from different parts of Metro Manila and nearby provinces.  

The PPCRV, being the citizens’ arm of the Comelec, performs three functions during election time. These are voter’s education, poll watching and encoding and verification of the ERs. 

Even after the Comelec has proclaimed the winners in the mid-term polls and the transparency server stopped sending data, the PPCRV said it would continue to compare the numbers from the ERs with those electronically transmitted from the Comelec’s transparency server to determine if there was “dagdag bawas” (vote padding and vote shaving) during the May 13 mid-term polls. – With Evelyn Macairan