Marcos urged to veto bill postponing barangay, SK elections

National

PRESIDENT Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was urhed to veto the recently reconciled Senate and House bill that seeks to postpone the December 1, 2025 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).

Veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal argued that approving the measure would once again trample on the constitutional rights of Filipino voters—and repeat a mistake already invalidated by the Supreme Court.

“This bill suffers from the same constitutional and legal flaws as Republic Act No. 11935, which attempted to delay the December 2022 BSKE but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the landmark 2023 case of Macalintal v. Comelec,” the lawyer said in a Philstar report.

“The President must avoid repeating the error of endorsing what the Supreme Court has already declared unconstitutional: an act that deprives voters of their right to elect local leaders and instead subjects them to appointed incumbents through legislative fiat,” he said.

Although framed as “An Act Setting the Terms of Office for Barangay Officials,” Macalintal said the bill is misleading.

Its core consequence, he asserted, is to delay the elections and allow current officials to remain in office without fresh mandates.

“It effectively extends their tenure in a holdover capacity, without a public mandate” he said.

Macalintal warned that the Congress may have the authority to define term lengths, but not to 'extend' them by postponing elections. Doing so, he argued, “violates the people’s constitutional right to choose their leaders”.

“In deciding the fate of this new bill, the President should heed the Supreme Court’s firm pronouncements in Macalintal. The Court warned that election postponement ‘could foster a government that is not democratic and republican as mandated by the Constitution.’ RA 11935, which the President previously signed, was declared unconstitutional for unreasonably and arbitrarily infringing on the people’s right of suffrage,” he added.

Macalintal also criticized the bill for violating another key constitutional requirement: that a legislative measure must deal with only one subject, clearly stated in its title. The bill, he noted, combines three separate matters: setting a new term of office, postponing elections, and authorizing holdover appointments.

“This is a textbook example of log-rolling legislation—where a bill misleadingly appears to cover a single issue while concealing unrelated or controversial provisions,” he added.

“In sum, there is no meaningful difference between this reconciled bill and RA 11935—both lack sufficient government interest or any public emergency that would justify postponing the December 1, 2025 BSKE,” he added.(Rosemarie Fe Singson, PIT Comm. Intern)