No barangay polls in 2025? Why watchdogs oppose push to lengthen officials’ terms

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

The House of Representatives and the Senate are both seeking to increase the number of years in service of elective barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials.

The specific details vary, but advocates for clean elections are concerned, as the move will result in the postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE) scheduled in December this year.

They say the push goes against a Supreme Court ruling that flagged the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for once delaying the BSKE without justifiable reason.

Status of the proposals

The upper chamber already passed on final reading Senate Bill No. 2629, which sets the term of barangay and SK officials to four years from the current three years. Barangay officials can be reelected twice.

The elections shall be held on the first Monday of October 2027, which means that officials elected in the most recent BSKE in October 2023 will serve in a holdover capacity for two more years, since no polls will be held to elect their successors in December 2025.

In the House, the primary measure — House Bill No. 11287 — seeks to set the term of office of barangay and SK officials to six years, with barangay officials eligible for reelection once. This means that in both versions, village officials can stay in power uninterrupted for 12 years.

The House wants to set the barangay elections on the second Monday of May 2029, and every six years thereafter. This means that under this proposal, the December 2025 polls won’t push through, allowing incumbent officials to hold on to their seats for four more years.

Justification

For proponents of the measure, amending the Local Government Code to lengthen the term of office for barangay officials would empower them to implement programs in a meticulous and effective manner, and finish projects that they were supposedly unable to with just a three-year term.

“Fixing the term of office of this official to six years will create stability that will lead to a better continuity in policies, thus ensuring the initiatives are seen through completion and evaluated for effectiveness,” said Quezon City 6th District Representative Ma. Victoria Co-Pilar, who sponsored the measure in the House.

Senator Imee Marcos, for instance, also argued that a longer term of office for village officials would save the national government billions of pesos, as organizing the BSKE every three years on top of the presidential and midterm polls is costly.

Pushback

But for watchdogs, a potential postponement runs contrary to what the Supreme Court already said about resetting elections.

Village polls in the Philippines have been deferred numerous times now. It is one of the unfortunate legacies of the Rodrigo Duterte administration, copied by his successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The most recent law that Marcos signed on the matter — Republic Act No. 11935 — was even declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the first time the High Court rebuffed a Marcos-era legislation.

In RA 11935, the Marcos administration postponed the December 2022 polls until October 2023, which finally pushed through, as the last elections were held in 2018. At the time, Congress justified the postponement through a variety of reasons, from government savings to election fatigue.

In light of the frequent deferments, the Supreme Court outlined criteria to justify a postponement of the vote. Among other things, it said that the postponement must be:

• intended to guarantee the conduct of free, honest, orderly, and safe elections
• intended to safeguard the electorate’s right of suffrage
• based on compelling reasons such as public emergencies
• reasonably appropriate for the purpose of advancing a sufficiently important, substantial, or compelling governmental reasons
• based on genuine reasons and only on objective and reasonable criteria
• must also guarantee that the elections will be held at regular periodic intervals that are not unduly long

Lawyer Romulo Macalintal, the election law veteran who scored the first point against President Marcos at the High Court, is once again questioning the congressional push to postpone the December 2025 polls, and is calling on Marcos to reject the proposal once it is sent to his desk.

Macalintal said the legislative bills are “misleading, deceptive, and unconstitutional,” as they conceal the postponement under the guise of fixing the terms of office of barangay and SK officials.

“It hides the fact that the scheduled Decembe 2025 BSKE is postponed without any valid reason. Thus, it circumvents the guidelines set by the Supreme Court in postponing elections in the case of Macalintal vs Comelec (Commission on Elections),” he told Rappler.

“Here, the holdover provision for incumbent barangay and SK officials constitutes legislative appointments of these BSK officials in violation of the Constitution’s rule that they should be elected. In a word, they don’t have the mandate of the people,” Macalintal added. “It is high time that we, the people, should rally against this clear intention of our legislators to deceive us.”

The Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) shares the same view.

“We are against the postponement of the 2025 BSKE. It deprives the electorate of the basic right to choose people who will govern them,” LENTE chief Ona Caritos also told Rappler.

In the House, Kabataan Representative Raoul Manuel raised the concern of watchdogs in his interpellation during plenary debates, citing Macalintal vs Comelec.

But Co-Pilar insisted: “The bill itself is not postponement. It’s about fixing the term of the barangay officials through amending the Local Government Code of 1990, particularly sections 42 and 43…We’re fixing it so [the polls] will no longer be postponed.”

HB 11287 still passed on second reading after the plenary debates, and is already up for final reading before a bicameral conference committee reconciles their differences in the measures they passed. – Rappler.com