Senators say barangay polls deferment ‘physically impossible’

With only a few sessions left before Congress goes on break, senators said that it might be impossible to approve the proposed postponement of barangay elections this year.

“Hindi na aabot. Gustuhin ‘man namin, pero karamihan sa amin hindi pabor. Ngayon, ipagpalagay natin na gusto naming pagbigyan yung mga House counterparts natin at ilalagay natin sa agenda at may magfi-file or ifo-forward kaagad nila samin at makarating samin, kailangan mag hearing kami ([It] won’t make it in time. Even if we want it, many of us are not in favor. Now, let’s say that we would like to indulge our House counterparts, and somebody would file or if they would forward it to us right away and reaches us, we still need to conduct hearings),” Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III told dzMM on Tuesday.

According to Sotto, there is still no counterpart bill for postponing the polls filed at the Senate.

He added that even though a counterpart measure reaches the upper house, senators would not be able to finish committee hearings and approve the bill given the fact that they only have few days left before Congress goes on recess from March 22 to May 13. The elections is set to be held on May 14.

“Physically impossible [na maipasa] unless ise-certify na urgent at saka kami’y biglang io-overtime namin ito. Eh karamihan nga sa amin hindi ito gusto. Medyo mahirap na mapagbigyan sila dito (It is physically impossible unless it is certified as urgent, then we will immediately work overtime. However, many of us are against it. It is hard for us to give them a chance),” the senator added.

Meanwhile, Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said that they would address the measure “normally” and would do the usual hearings.

“We will treat it normally… Iba pamamalakad namin dito. Ire-refer namin sa committee on local government, maghi-hearing (We have a different system here. We will refer [it] to the committee on local government and there will be hearings),” Pimentel said.

Voting 14-2, the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms approved proposals to defer the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections set for May 2018.

Two lawmakers who disapproved the postponement were ACT Teachers party-list Representative Antonio Tinio and Caloocan City Representative Edgar Erice.

Surigao del Norte Representative Robert Ace Barbers, for his part, defended the proposal, saying that delaying the village polls does not mean “going against the principles of democracy.”

“Let’s not forget that postponing it is not totally deleting, cancelling, or removing elections in this country. We are just postponing this particular elections because there are more serious problems that we should address first before we continue this,” Barbers said.

This is the third time the village poll was postponed. Barangay elections were originally scheduled on October 2016 but were moved to October 2017.  It was set again in May 2018.