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Thursday, January 13, 2005
Barangay polls to be reset May ‘08
Two House committees agreed yesterday to recommend that the barangay elections be put off until May 2008, which will stretch the present leaders’ terms to a total of six years.
Deputy Speaker for the Visayas Raul del Mar is optimistic the proposal will be approved by the Lower House, after it gained “overwhelming support” yesterday from the committees on local government and on suffrage and electoral reforms.
In a bill filed in September last year, the Cebu City congressman and Speaker Jose de Venecia recommended the May 2008 schedule, “when the fiscal problem would have been scaled down to manageable levels and the country would have the needed time and resources.”
After the last barangay and Sangguniang Kaba-taan elections in 2002, the next round was supposed to be this year.
“But it is an electoral exercise that the country at this time can ill-afford. To postpone it would be the more prudent thing to do,” de Venecia and del Mar said in House Bill 2803.
A postponement will save the National Government at least P1 billion this year.
Two other proposed dates were rejected: 2006, as being too soon for the country to pull itself out of the fiscal crisis, and 2007, because of the local election scheduled in May that year.
“Nobody disagrees with postponing it,” said del Mar, who represents the city’s north district. “Not holding the barangay elections this year will not impair services in the barangays.”
Cebu City Councilor Eugenio “Jingjing” Faelnar said the 2008 schedule is practical, because it leaves enough time for people to get over their differences during the 2007 local polls.
“I don’t favor a postponement. But if the barangay elections will be postponed, it should not be held close to the local elections,” he said.
Faelnar, who is now on his third term as barangay captain of Guadalupe, said holding the barangay elections in 2007 would create too much division.
But he also said non-performing barangay captains should not consider the possible postponement as advantageous to them, because they can be recalled by displeased constituents.
Rep. Mario Aguja earlier said his party-list group, Akbayan, is pushing for a barangay election in 2006 because 2008 would make the incumbent officials’ terms too long.
He also confirmed there was nothing earmarked in the 2005 national budget for the Commission on Election to hold the elections this year.
Del Mar, in a phone interview yesterday, said the main objection to holding the barangay election in 2007 was that it would be “one election too many in one year.” Local elections are scheduled in May 2007.
“Also, the barangay elections are supposed to be nonpartisan,” the congressman pointed out. (AIV/IDA)
(January 13, 2005 issue)
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