BY WENDELL VIGILIA and RAYMOND AFRICA
ALBAY Rep. Edcel Lagman yesterday hailed the Supreme Court (SC) decision declaring as unconstitutional Republic Act No. 11935 or the law postponing the December 2022 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE), saying the ruling only “sustains my position and those of a few other legislators that the challenged statute violates the Constitution.”
RA 11935 law postponed the BSKE from its initial schedule of December 5, 2022 to the last Monday of October 2023.
“This ruling will now foreclose any capricious and unnecessary attempt of the Congress to postpone future BSKEs,” said Lagman, who was among the opposition congressmen who voted against the measure.
“The electorate’s right of suffrage must be exercised in determinable intervals and regularly scheduled elections,” Lagman, a veteran lawyer-lawmaker, said.
He added the High Court’s decision “also supports our contention that the purported reason for the postponement to transfer funds earmarked for the BSKE to pandemic response violates the constitutional ban on transfer of funds.”
He said the decision likewise backed “our opposition to the repeated postponement of the village and youth elections based on arbitrary grounds like ‘election fatigue’.”
Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III likewise welcomed the SC decision declaring.
Pimentel opposed the postponement of the barangay and youth polls when the measure was debated in the Senate plenary.
Pimentel said the SC court “validated my earlier claim that there was no compelling reason to delay the barangay and SK elections” as he emphasized that there should be “regular, periodic, fair, free, honest, and accurate elections as essential components of an inclusive and functioning democracy.”
“This ruling by the Supreme Court will effectively prevent the recurring practice of postponing the barangay and SK elections to the detriment of the Filipino people and our democratic processes,” he said.
The SC en banc voted unanimously on Tuesday to declare RA 11935 as unconstitutional, ruling that it “violates the freedom of suffrage as it failed to satisfy the requirements of the substantive aspect of due process clause of the Constitution.”
“The Court 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,” the court said in its decision.
It added that the enactment of RA 19935 was “attended with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.”
The SC justices lamented that “the means employed by Congress are unreasonably unnecessary to achieve the interest of the government sought to be accomplished, and that the said means are unduly arbitrary or oppressive of the electorates’ right of suffrage.”
They also underscored that “the primordial purpose stated in the various bills presented in the Senate and the House of Representatives sought the realignment of the budget allocation of the Comelec for the 2022 BSKE to the Executive for the latter’s use in its projects cannot be done without violating the explicit prohibition in the Constitution against any transfer of appropriations.”
“The postponement of the 2022 BSKE by RA 11935 for the purpose of augmenting the Executive’s fund 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,” they stressed.
The SC also said that “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.”
Rep. France Castro (PL, ACT) said the SC’s decision “upholds the democratic rights of the Filipino people, as well as the youth, to participate in local governance.”
“This is a significant victory for democracy and the rights of the Filipino people. The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms that the voices of the grass roots and the youth should not be silenced and that they have the right to choose their representatives in the barangays and SK councils,” Castro said.
Castro said the postponement of the BSKE was seen by many as a move to “curtail the democratic participation of the Filipino people,” and the SC’s decision only “ensures that the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution are upheld and protected.”
The ruling will also stop the practice of suspending barangay and SK elections as a reward of national and local officials to barangay and SK officials whose terms are extended without holding elections, she added.
“This ruling allows the grassroots and the youth to exercise their democratic right to choose their representatives and contribute to the development of their communities,” said the Makabayan bloc lawmaker.
‘VALID REASONS’
Sen. Imee Marcos, who sponsored the measure at the Senate, said she respects the High Court’s decision but stood firm that the reasons for the postponement “which were espoused during the debates and hearings remain valid.”
“The present barangay and SK officials need sufficient time to implement their programs which have been sidetracked by the pandemic. Furthermore, it is high time that the term of barangay and SK officials be extended,” Marcos said.
She said she filed Senate Bill No. 1195 last August 16, 2022 seeking to extend the terms of the barangay officials to six years because the three-year term for barangay and SK officials is inadequate to perform their programs and projects in line with programs of the national government.
Besides, she added, extending the terms of said officials will also help the government save funds as it will not hold elections so often.
“Elections, even ones involving barangay and SK officials, are costly. The government will save tens of billions by extending the terms of barangay and SK officials,” she insisted.
At the same time, Marcos questioned why Justice Antonio Kho, the ponente of the SC decision and a former commissioner of the Commission on Elections, is now singing a different tune.
Maroc pointed out that during a Senate hearing last September 19, Kho told a Senate hearing that the poll body prefers that the BSKE be not held on the same year as the national elections.
“Comelec manifested that the barangay and SK elections should be held either a year before or after the national elections so that the Commission will have sufficient time to prepare. Thus, by having the elections in 2023 instead of 2022, we would have avoided the situation where there will be two nationwide elections in a single year,” she said.
She said the postponement of the BSKE was requested by the administration in 2022 since barangay and SK officials were supposedly not able to carry out their tasks and projects due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SHORTER TERM
The SC ruling said that despite the unconstitutionality of RA 11935, the BSKE set on October 30, 2023 must push through due to “legal practicality and necessity.” It likewise set the next barangay and youth polls to be held on the first Monday of December 2025.
With this, the Comelec advised those planning to run in the forthcoming polls that they will only be serving for two years instead of three years.
In a radio interview, Comelec chairman George Garcia said: “In the SC decision, it stated that there should be a barangay and SK election again by December 2025. This is based on the previous law that set the BSKE in December 2022. This only means that the term of office of those to be elected in the October 2023 elections will be shorter.”
The Comelec has already said that the decision of the SC won’t alter their preparations, especially with the date of elections still on October 30.
Garcia reiterated that they are almost 100 percent prepared to conduct the elections.
“We are 95 percent ready… Our schedule remains intact, including the filing of Certificates of Candidacy, election period, gun ban, public works ban, all of these are intact and have no changes,” he said.
“The only ones we still need to do is print additional ballots, train our teachers, and hold the command conference with the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police for the peace and order situation,” he added. — With Gerard Naval
