Since the Supreme Court (SC) has not ruled on the petition to declare unconstitutional the postponement of the Dec. 5, 2022 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE), the High Court is now asked to compel the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to resume the preparations for May 2023 elections.
The postponement of the Dec. 5 BSKE was mandated by Republic Act No. 11935 which was signed into law by President Ferdinand “Bongbong" Marcos Jr. last Oct. 10. The law reset the BSKE to last Monday of October 2023.
On top of postponing BSKE, the law also provides that all incumbent barangay and SK (Sangguniang Kabataan) officials will remain in office until their successors are elected and qualified or unless they are sooner removed or suspended.
The constitutionality of RA 11935 was challenged before the SC by election lawyer Romulo B. Macalintal. The SC required the Comelec and the Office of the President to comment and then conducted oral arguments on the petition last Oct. 31.
In a pleading filed with the SC, Macalintal’s move cited the Comelec’s manifestation that the earliest possible date to hold the BSKE would be in May 2023.
"Aware of the competence and wide experience of Comelec in conducting elections, be it manual or automated, and its chairman being a very experienced election lawyer, petitioner (Macalintal) honestly submits that the said election could be held at an earlier date,” Macalintal said.
“After all, the Comelec, as of now, had already spent P1 billion of the poll body's P8-billion budget for the said elections since the notices of award were only obligated. More or less five million ballots have been printed," he said.
He also told the SC:
"So as not to delay the proceedings in this case, petitioner would subscribe to Comelec's aforesaid submission and would not challenge the same.
“There is the compelling need to direct respondent Comelec to resume its preparation for the conduct of the barangay and youth polls to make it logistically possible for the poll body to hold the said elections in May 2023 in the event that the instant petition is granted.”
In its comment on Macalintal’s petition to declare RA 11935 unconstitional, the Comelec and the Office of the President sought the dismissal of the petition “for utter lack of merit.”
Through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), the SC was also asked to deny the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) sought in the petition.
Among other legal arguments, the OSG told the SC that “the power to fix dates of elections is expressly granted by the Constitution to the Congress.”
“In allowing the date of the election for national officials to be fixed by law, the Constitution expressly granted the legislature the power to change the date of their election from that fixed by the Constitution,” it said.
On the extension of the term of barangay and SK officials as mandated by RA 11935, the OSG said: “In the first place, as previously mentioned, a holdover capacity, to be clear, is not synonymous to a term.”
“Although the necessary effect thereof is the continuation of the barangay official’s exercise of his or her powers, such capacity is ad hoc only in nature and does not have the character of permanency,” it said.
TAGS: #SC #BSKE #Comelec #OSG