EDITORIAL - Pandering

In time for the start of the election period, certain candidates have again revived the effort to extend forever if possible the terms of their political leaders at the grassroots.

The proposal that has been dredged up again in both chambers of Congress seeks to postpone the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections set in December this year, not just by another year but by up to four years, thus giving BSK officials a six-year term, longer than that of congressmen and local government executives.

Such postponements effectively extend the terms of BSK officials, depriving others of a chance to seek barangay and youth council posts, and robbing voters of the right to get rid of incompetent and crooked village officials. During the Duterte administration, dozens of barangay captains faced criminal indictments for drug trafficking. There were numerous complaints about barangay officials’ abuses during the pandemic lockdowns. Yet the same administration turned BSKE postponements into a bad habit that the current political leadership now seeks to perpetuate, in time for the election period.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court had declared as unconstitutional Republic Act 11935 signed by President Marcos, which postponed the December 2022 BSKE. The SC summary of its ruling, peppered with the word “unconstitutional,” stressed that “the free and meaningful exercise of the right to vote, as protected and guaranteed by the Constitution, 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 government continues to be based on the free expression of the will of electors.”

Postponement of elections, the SC ruled, must be an exception, justified by reasons that are sufficiently important, substantial or compelling such as a public emergency.

Aiding the election bids of senators and congressmen is not a public emergency. Postponement of the BSKE by a year is “unduly long” and four years is an atrocity.

The SC, in summarizing its ruling, said “reasons such as election fatigue, purported resulting divisiveness, shortness of existing term, and/or other superficial or farcical reasons alone, may not serve as important, substantial or compelling reasons to justify the postponement of the elections.”

And yet here we go again, with lawmakers – notably several who are trailing in the pre-election surveys – pandering to village officials by promising a term extension that will likely not materialize after being challenged again before the Supreme Court. BSK officials themselves should watch out for this kind of budol-budol being presented to them in aid of the proponents’ election.