Sotto says Marcos admin should decide if barangay, SK polls be reset or not
Senate President Vicente C. Sotto III today (May 30) said it is better for the incoming Marcos administration to decide whether the December 5 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections shall go on as scheduled or reset them.
Sotto said it would be better if next Congress should get the opinion first of President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr on the issue.
To postpone them meant that village officials would have longer term than the President of the Philippines if these elections this year would be postponed anew, he jokingly said.
Sotto, thus, joined other sectors in opposing the postponement of these elections.
He said these electoral exercises had been postponed several times.
After four six-year terms in the Senate, Sotto leaves the Upper House on June 30.
In 2016, the barangay and SK elections were postponed to 2018. The following year, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law moving the May 2020 elections to December.
The possibility of postponing the elections floated again with House Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez saying this would free up over P8 billion in funding which could be used for the government’s Covid-19 response.
There is a pending bill in the House of Representatives o seeking to postpone the barangay and SK elections to May 6, 2024.