DAVAO CITY—President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has rejected a proposal from the Commission on Elections to defer the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled in October.
“I’m not in favor. The law says that when you end there, you end there,” Duterte told reporters at a hotel here on Sunday.
He said a postponement of the polls would only mean that the sitting officials would remain in their posts beyond their terms.
The Comelec had cited “election fatigue as the reason to postpone the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to a later date.’’
In April, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said it was not practical for the poll body to hold another voting exercise in October given that the national and local elections had just ended.
He added it would be “costly” for them to conduct a manual election in over 420,000 villages in the country.
“We have this so-called election fatigue. We don’t want to have too many elections in the country,” Bautista said.
“Aside from fatigue, holding elections is expensive and mainly because we have to pay more teachers who will serve as Board of Election Tellers.”
Although he had no any idea when it would be best to hold the Barangay and SK elections, Bautista said they would be asking Congress to consider deferring them.
A bill filed by Pasay Rep. Emmy Calixto-Rubiano calling for a deferment of the polls is pending in Congress.
