EDITORIAL — No-el scenarios

The next time the urge hits Sen. Imee Marcos to once again push for a postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections, she may think of her deep concern over the prospect of the 2028 general elections being canceled.

Regular renewal of the voter’s mandate is a bedrock of representative democracy. Elections allow people to change underperforming or crooked officials. Elections provide opportunities for others to serve. And there are many who want to do so, across all levels of government, from the presidency down to the barangay and youth councils.

Yet since the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, extending the terms of barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials through the postponement of the BSK elections has become a bad habit.

In the previous administration, Congress and the executive readily canceled the BSKE at every flimsy excuse – ignoring warnings from the Commission on Elections that every postponement added billions to the cost – to reward their political leaders at the grassroots, or curry BSK favor before general and midterm elections.

Among the first laws that President Marcos signed upon assuming power was Republic Act 11935, which again reset the BSKE from Dec. 5, 2022 to October 2023, granting the incumbent officials yet another one-year term extension.

Acting on a petition, the Supreme Court declared RA 11935 unconstitutional in June 2023, but because of the circumstances allowed the BSKE to be held in the last Monday of October 2023.

The SC stressed, among other things, “that the free and meaningful exercise of the right to vote, as protected and guaranteed by the Constitution, requires the holding of genuine periodic elections, which must be held at intervals which are not unduly long, and which ensure that the authority of government continues to be based on the free expression of the will of electors.”

Instead of heeding the SC warning, Congress and the executive went further, not only resetting the BSKE scheduled in December last year to November 2026, but also giving BSK officials a four-year term, longer than that of congressmen and local government executives. The SC went along with the argument that the one-year postponement was merely incidental to the extension of the term to four years.

Now Senator Marcos again wants the BSKE postponed, ostensibly to save public funds amid the fuel crisis. Those who want to challenge the incumbent BSK officials aren’t the only ones dismayed.

Perhaps the senator can now understand the dismay, amid her allegation that her brother plans to cancel the 2028 elections, robbing her bet for president, Vice President Sara Duterte, of the opportunity to run.