The incoming Marcos administration is considering legislation that would extend the term of barangay officials from three years to five years, Executive Secretary-designate Vic Rodriguez said Thursday.
“We are studying thoroughly the plus and the minuses of spending or calling for elections and there is nothing definite yet,” Rodriguez said when asked if the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections would push through in December.
“But we are open to all options that are being presented to us including the possibility of passing a law and making the term of barangay captains to five years, still subject to three terms,” he said.
Rodriguez said that as a former barangay captain in Quezon City, he believed amending the current term to five years with a limit of three terms would improve barangay governance and would be better than the current practice of constantly postponing barangay elections.
In 2019, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act 11462 postponing the May 2020 Barangay and SK polls to December 2022.
The last Barangay and SK elections were held in May 2018, which were also postponed twice.
The polls were supposed to be held in October 2016.
Rodriguez also noted that it would provide a higher degree of accountability, especially with the Mandanas-Garcia ruling set for implementation this year, which would infuse additional funds to the local government units (LGUs) down to the barangays.
At present, LGUs’ internal revenue allotment comes from 40 percent of national internal revenue taxes collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
With the Mandanas-Garcia ruling implementation this year, it is projected that LGUs will have a 27.61 percent increase in their total IRA share.
During the campaign, Marcos said he would include in his priority bills measures to amend laws governing the barangay, such as his proposal when he was Senator to extend the terms of barangay officials from three to five years.
The objective is to give the officials sufficient time to finish their projects in their areas of jurisdiction.