Comelec to ask SC to reconsider ruling on postponed barangay, SK polls
MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections said that it will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the law postponing the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled in 2022.
The SC in June declared as unconstitutional Republic Act 11935, the law that moved the BSKE to Oct. 30, 2023 from Dec. 5, 2022. The SC said that since the ruling was issued months before the coming December BSKE, the polls will be allowed as scheduled.
The court ruled that succeeding barangay elections shall be held on the first Monday of December 2025, and every three years from then.
The Comelec, in a statement, has pointed out that it will conduct the midterm elections in May 2025, and following the pronouncement of the SC, it will also hold the BSKE that year “barely a few months after the [National and Local Elections 2025].”
“Since the incoming BSKE officials will be voted for in October 2023, and the election of their successors will be held in December 2025, Chairman George Erwin Garcia said that ‘it will cause the unintended effect of shortening the term of BSKE officials to merely two years,’” the statement read.
The last barangay elections were held in 2018. Those polls had also been rescheduled and were supposed to have been held in October 2016.
While the Comelec did not include in its statement the arguments that they will raise in their motion, Garcia said that they will not assail the SC’s pronouncements declaring RA 11935 as unconstitutional and outline criteria on subsequent electoral postponements, “as this matter is within the competence of Congress.”
The ruling
The SC, in a decision written by Associate Justice Antonio Kho, granted the consolidated petitions filed by veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal and six other lawyers.
The tribunal stressed that the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote “requires the holding of genuine periodic elections, which must be held at intervals which are not unduly long, and which ensure that the authority of the government continues to be based on the free expression of the will of electors.”
While the SC noted that Congress did not “unconstitutionally” encroach on the power of the Comelec when it enacted RA 11935, it found that there was no legitimate government interest or objective to support the legislative measure, and “that the law unconstitutionally exceeds the bounds of the Congress’ power to legislate.”
“(T)he postponement of the 2022 BSKE by RA 11935 for the purpose of augmenting the executive’s funds is violative of the Constitution because it unconstitutionally transgresses the constitutional prohibition against any transfer of appropriations, and it unconstitutionally and arbitrarily overreaches the exercise of the rights of suffrage, liberty and expression,” the briefer on the ruling stated.
“(T)he means employed by Congress are unreasonably unnecessary to achieve the interest the government sought to be accomplished, and that the said means are unduly arbitrary or oppressive of the electorates’ right of suffrage,” it added. —with reports from The STAR/Neil Jayson Servallos
- Latest
- Trending
