The House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms on Thursday, Aug. 25, approved during its second meeting the substitute bill that seeks to postpone the synchronized barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections from December 2022 to the first Monday of December 2023.

Voting 11-0, the panel consolidated more than 30 bills on the postponement of the barangay and SK polls, which was originally scheduled on Dec. 5, 2022, House committee Chair Rep. Maximo Dalog Jr. said.

This was the second meeting of the House panel this 19th Congress, with Dayog highlighting the urgency to resolve the issue on the barangay and SK polls since the scheduled elections are only 100 days away.

The lawmaker shared that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is waiting for guidance from Congress since the poll body is set to start ballot printing next month.

Not everyone agrees that the elections should be postponed, however. Kabataan Party-list Rep. Raoul Manuel submitted a dissenting opinion saying that the delay in the polls “is antithetical to the democratic right of every Filipino to choose their own leaders.”

He added that the postponement is against Article IV of the 1987 Constitution and while “excuses” are offered as reasons, the lawmaker stressed that there should be no excuse that can overpower the “supreme right and basic exercise of freedom, which is suffrage".

“The power to vote has been fought for long and hard, and the scales should always tip in favor of guaranteeing that democracy is at work rather than diminishing platforms for its exercise. Other, more creative means of resolving the arguments for postponement can be done without hampering the overdue and much-awaited chance to choose new local leaders,” Manuel wrote.

READ: Solons bare reasons why barangay, SK polls were postponed at House committee level

The substitute bill, which set the elections in December 2023 instead of May 2024 as some lawmakers sought, will be sent to the House Committee on Appropriations after its approval by the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms.

Aside from moving the scheduled date of the elections, the bill also provided that current barangay and SK officials would keep their posts in a holdover capacity until the next officers are elected.

Winners of the barangay and SK polls in December 2023 will begin their term on January 1, 2024 for a period of three years.

The bill also stated that barangay and SK polls shall be held every three years thereafter.

Earlier, lawmakers noted that the government funds—amounting to some P8 billion—allocated for the barangay and SK elections could instead be used for the country’s Covid-19 pandemic response initiatives.

The barangay and SK elections is long overdue as the previous administration repeatedly postponed the polls since 2016.

The first was the scheduled October 2016 elections that the Duterte administration moved to October 2017, and then pushed again to May 2018.

The subsequent elections were supposed to take place in May 2020, but the Duterte administration had it postponed to Dec. 5 this year.