Senate OKs postponement of barangay polls to 2022

THE Senate yesterday unanimously voted to pass the bill postponing the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to December 5, 2022.

The 21 senators who attended the plenary session voted to approve Senate Bill No. 1043 on third and final reading. No one abstained.

This would effectively extend by two and a half years the original two-year terms of incumbent officials elected on May 14, 2018.

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The bill was authored by Sens. Christopher Lawrence Go, Imee Marcos, Ramon Revilla, Jr., Nancy Binay, Sherwin Gatchalian, Francis Tolentino and Juan Edgardo Angara.

The House of Representatives’ version of the measure cleared the committee level last week.

The push to postpone the elections again followed the call of President Duterte during his State of the Nation Address in July.

He had noted that the current two-year terms were “truncated” compared to the usual three-year terms observed before he became President.

Under Duterte, the elections for the country’s first-level political unit got postponed twice as he cited the problem with illegal drugs.

Originally scheduled on Oct. 31, 2016, the elections were moved to Oct. 23, 2017 and then May 14, 2018. This meant the three-year terms of the barangay officials elected in 2013 became four and a half years.

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