House appropriations panel vows to restore Comelec budget cuts in prep for 2025 polls

The House of Representatives committee on appropriations has committed to restore the P3 billion- budget cuts to the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) proposed P49.748 billion budget proposal as it gears up for next year’s elections. 

This, as Comelec chairperson George Erwin Garcia during the budget hearing at the House described 2025 as a “super election” year, with the proposed budget covering the automated midterm National and Local Elections (NLE), the first Bangsamoro Parliamentary Election (BPE), and the manual Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) to follow five months later.

” It’s a big thing that we lost P3 billion for the national and local elections because that included, Your Honors, the training of our more than 300,000 teachers who will work in the upcoming 2025 elections,” Garcia stated.

The BPE is where 80 members of parliament will be elected in accordance with the peace process commitment and with Republic Act 11054 or the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Under the National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2025, Comelec will only receive P35.47 billion, P14.95 billion of which is allocated for the midterm elections and P11.59 billion for the BSKE.

“By May 12, 2025 we are going to conduct the national and local elections, senators down to the last councilor, involving 18,200 positions,” Garcia stated. The poll body proposed P18.02 billion for the said elections.  

Due to the constraints imposed by the NEP budget, Comelec decided to operate with around 104,000 machines and precincts, instead of the 128,000 initially planned for the 2025 elections. 

Garcia, nonetheless, thanked President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. for retaining the requested increase in honoraria for teachers serving on election day and for allowing support staff at each precinct. 

Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong expressed dissatisfaction with the P14 billion budget cut from Comelec’s request, noting that the reduction affects crucial services, such as voter education, teacher training, and the BARMM elections. 

The lawmaker emphasized the importance of these activities for ensuring orderly, honest and peaceful elections. He stressed the BARMM elections as a critical step towards sustainable peace and autonomy for Muslim minorities in the Philippines.

“It is critical that the reduction of this budget does not only speak about logistics challenges that COMELEC will now be facing. It will also speak about how they will ensure that the BARMM election will be orderly, peaceful and honest elections,” he said. 

Adiong stressed the need for inclusivity and proposed that party representation in the BPE be based on a percentage of total votes, like the party-list system in the House of Representatives rather than a winner-takes-all method.