A legislator from the Bicol region on Tuesday filed a bill setting the next barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE) on October 26, 2026, and then every three years thereafter.
Camarines Sur second district Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said his House Bill 10344 complies with the provisions of both our Constitution and the Local Government Code (LGC) of 1991 on the fixed three-year terms of these local officials.
Villafuerte pointed out that holding the next polls for barangay and SK officials on December 1, 2025 will mean a shorter term for them, which is “tantamount to the impairment of the expectations from the incumbents of our electorate’s overall exercise of their right to suffrage.”
The previous BSKE was held last October 2023, which means that the incumbent officials will serve for two years only if the next poll is held in 2025, according to the lawmaker.
This shorter term for the would-be winners, once the BSKE is held next year as currently scheduled, will “actually contravene the three-year term of office for these elective officials as mandated by the 1987 Charter and the 1991 LGC,” said Villafuerte.
The lawmaker wrote HB 10344 with his fellow Bicolano legislators Camarines Sur fifth district Rep. Miguel Luis Villafuerte and Bicol Saro party-list Rep. Brian Raymund Yamsuan.
The bill likewise “diminishes the obligations of the incumbent BSK officials to serve their constituents, and lessens their accountabilities in the exercise of the power vested in them by the people’s free choice” if they shall serve for only two years,” Villafuerte added.
In compliance with the constitutional mandate on three-year terms for BSKE winners, this bill complies with the election date provided in RA 11462 by moving the balloting to Oct. 26, 2026, from Dec. 1, 2025, according to his proposal.
This is because Article X, Section 8 of the Constitution states that “the term of office of elective local officials, except barangay officials, which shall be determined by law, shall be three years and no such official shall serve for more than three consecutive terms.”
Section 43 (C) of Republic Act (RA) 9164 or the LGC Code, meanwhile, states that “the term of office of barangay officials and members of the SK shall be for three (3) years, which shall begin after the regular election of barangay officials on the second Monday of May 1994.”
Moreover, Villafuerte said, Section 2 of RA 9164 states that, “the term of office of all barangay and SK officials after the effectivity of this Act shall be three (3) years.”
RA 11935, which was an amendatory law to RA 9164, postponed the BSKE from Dec. 5, 2022 to Oct. 30, 2023.