Postpone BSKE for the nth time?

There is a new bid to postpone – for the nth time – the holding of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan election (BSKE). President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) is reportedly keeping an “open” mind on the latest proposals to reset the BSKE scheduled for Nov. 2 this year.

Palace press officer Claire Castro cited PBBM is mindful about the need for the government to have enough resources amid the Middle East (ME) conflict that spawned the oil price crisis in the Philippines. Castro noted as much as P16 billion will be saved if the BSKE will be postponed.

This Palace reaction was elicited after Bacolod City Rep. Albee Benitez called for six-month postponement of the BSKE to justify the realignment of election funds to government intervention measures to mitigate the impact of the ME conflict on the economic well-being of Filipinos.

The latest to join the bandwagon of lawmakers seeking to postpone the BSKE included the President’s sister, Sen. Imee Marcos. She filed last week Senate Bill (SB) 2067 proposing to defer the BSKE to the first Monday of October 2027. She argued that rising fuel prices, higher transportation costs and inflation could prevent many Filipinos from voting and entail high election costs.

Not all members of the 20th Congress are inclined to support new initiatives to again postpone the BSKE. Sen. Erwin Tulfo is amenable to deferment of this year’s slated BSKE as a practical cost-saving measure. But Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian opposed it and warned it could be potentially unconstitutional to postpone the BSKE for money reasons.

For now, there is no clear support in favor of deferring anew the BSKE to a much later date.

There is nothing new about the President’s inclination to postpone the BSKE. After all, he signed into law Republic Act (RA) 12232 when he first postponed the holding of BSKE from August 2025 to the first Monday of November 2026. Under RA 12232, subsequent regular BSKEs will be held every four years thereafter. Thus, it fixed the term of office of all elected barangay and SK officials to four years from the present three years.

The same law also stated that incumbent barangay and SK officials will remain in office until their successors are elected and qualified, unless removed or suspended for cause. The last BSKE was held in October 2024.

Hence, many of the incumbent officers are overstaying in office after postponements of BSKE.

A number of them have even been accused of abuses in office, if not implicated in corruption, as in the cases of two SK chairpersons in Dasmariñas and Magallanes barangays in Makati.

The Supreme Court (SC) declared unconstitutional RA 11935 that previously postponed the holding of the BSKE from December 2022 to the last Monday of October 2023. The Court found that there was no legitimate government interest or objective to support the legislative measure. The SC upheld the petition filed by veteran election lawyer Romulo Macalintal that the law unconstitutionally exceeded the bounds of Congress’ power to legislate.

However, the SC affirmed the legality of the latest BSKE under RA 12232. They ruled this time against the petition filed by Macalintal et al. The petitioners argued RA 12232 is invalid for failing to comply with the guidelines in postponing elections set in the 2023 case of Macalintal v. Comelec.

The renewed initiatives are not getting any traction yet in Congress. But Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin Garcia disclosed the poll body’s preparations for the 2026 BSKE are continuing. Garcia though assured the public that Comelec’s spending for the BSKE preparations will not go to waste even if the elections will be postponed.

Offhand, Garcia declared the Comelec will not oppose the postponement of the BSKE as the discretion is with Congress. “We can give suggestions, recommendations but in the end, [the Congress] has the final say on when the elections will be held or if these should be postponed,” Garcia pointed out.

However, Garcia cautioned against the proposed transfer of the election budget this year for the BSKE. He pointed to the prohibition under our country’s 1987 Constitution. Specifically, he mentioned the restriction spelled out in Article 6, Section 25 (5) on the transfer of allocation in budget law from a certain government agency or activity to another agency or item.

According to Garcia, the Comelec has already spent around P3 billion out of this year’s P19-billion budget for the conduct of the BSKE. The remaining P16 billion is yet to be released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), he revealed.

“It means that, if we can save from it, we can not spend the P19 billion yet but it cannot be used for aid to help our fellow citizens because it is allotted under the General Appropriations Act,” Garcia added.

If the BSKE is postponed, the unused funds can be declared as Comelec savings and will go back to the National Treasury. This is where the proponents backing the postponement of the BSKE are coming from.

There seems to be a contest of repeated postponements between the BSKE and the parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Just last March 25, PBBM signed into law RA 12317 to reset the holding of the first-ever BARMM Parliamentary elections to Sept. 14, 2026. PBBM invoked the need to support the peace process in Mindanao to justify its latest postponement.

Previously moved to October 2025 by RA 12123, this particular postponement came after the SC ruling that removed Sulu from BARMM jurisdiction that necessitated a redistricting of the regional parliamentary structure. To date, the BARMM Parliamentary polls have been aborted four times already.

Meanwhile, the latest proposal to postpone the BSKE emerged while PBBM launched the latest government ayuda program called Bawat Barangay Makikinabang (BBM) Program. The P8-billion BBM program gives out P200,000 to each of the 42,011 barangays nationwide for education, social services and local economic initiatives.

So why postpone the BSKE again?