Thursday, December 13, 2007 Editorials: Fix flaws in barangay, SK polls first
ELECTIONS for barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) officials and the subsequent federation polls are over and it looks like everybody is in forgetting mode.
When the elections were held complaints were raised, all of them exposing flaws that need to be corrected to ensure that public will is reflected in such a political exercise.
While some of the questionable acts only required the honest implementation of election laws to be fixed, the others can only be dealt with by creative legislation.
And considering the deterioration that was very visible in the manner the political exercises were held the past few months, forgetting about them is not the way to go.
Increased spending
Ways must be found, for example, to stop the soaring cost of running for a barangay and SK post because of increased spending particularly in buying votes.
While vote buying has been the fixture of all Philippine elections, what was seen in the barangay and SK elections is worrisome because of their proliferation and scope.
The most telling is, of course, votes of SK members bought at P1,000 per.
Objectionable practices also presented themselves when outsiders tried to influence the results of the Association of Barangay Councils and SK Federation polls.
These have been done in previous elections but that should not be a reason to loosen up on efforts to curb them or accept them as normal and therefore uncorrectable.
SK image
But the biggest blow is on the image of the SK considering that the questionable acts committed only strengthened the belief of many that the group should be abolished.
What infuriates some sectors is that instead of the SK becoming the training ground of idealistic politicians, it has instead become a manufacturer of trapos.
To think that even before the SK elections were held some members of Congress were already mulling the organization’s abolition.
Overhaul
Lawmakers, though, should not limit plans of an overhaul to the SK; taking a cue from the past political exercises, they should consider reforming the barangay elections.
Meaning, they should not jump to the next popular issue to ride on until they can fix whatever is wrong with the barangay and SK electoral setup.
