A law-enforcement advocate in the House of Representatives on Thursday branded the postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections from May this year to December next year a “mistake” as many village officials were proven incompetent during the Coronavirus Disease-19 outbreak.
In a statement, Party-list Rep. Jocelyn Tulfo of ACT-CIS said: “Postponing the barangay and SK elections so far into the future–in December 2022–was a mistake. Mistakes can be corrected. Let us correct this soon,” Tulfo said.
Tulfo said that instead of December 2020, the barangay and SK elections should be held early or middle of next year while memory of the deadly virus crisis is still fresh in the mind of voters.
“Waiting for December 5, 2022 for the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections would be torture for the millions of Filipinos whose village officials are performing dismally and whose incompetence was exposed during the COVID-19 outbreak,” she said.
“Having the village elections on December 5, 2022 will only serve to dim the voters’ memory on how their incompetent village officials performed when they were needed by the community,” she added.
Tulfo also said that holding the barangay and SK elections sooner would allow performing barangay officials to have a fresh mandate from their constituents, and this would serve as a reward for the “exemplary” services they rendered.
President Rodrigo Duterte in December last year signed the law postponing the barangay and SK elections to December 5, 2022. The polls were originally scheduled to be held in May this year.
The elections were postponed supposedly to allow the incumbent village officials “to continue implementing various policies and complete programs that they just started as funds have just been made available, for a more sustainable development of the barangays.”