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Saturday, August 27, 2005
‘Definite’: no barangay polls
CEBU CITY -- Members of the bicameral conference committee in Congress will meet next week to come up with the exact date when to hold the barangay elections.
Although both the Senate and the House of Representative have suggested different dates, the country’s 40,000 barangay captains no longer have to fret because it will surely not push through this year.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. earlier suggested that elections will proceed as scheduled this Oct. 21, but each barangay has to spend P72,000 for the exercise.
The projected expense for the elections is P2.8 billion.
Liga ng mga Barangay national president James Marty Lim earlier said if the Senate still fails to act on the barangay election issue, he will rally the country’s barangay captains to make a drastic move.
Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City north district) said the Lower House already appointed its representatives to the conference committee, whose duty is to come up with a common bill resetting the barangay elections.
Del Mar is the principal author of the bill that sets the date of the barangay elections to May 2008. The Senate version of the bill suggested that it will be done in May 2006.
He identified the congressmen who will make up the bicameral conference committee as suffrage committee chairman Teodoro Locsin, good government committee chairman Emilio Macias II, Rep. Jacinto Paras of the opposition, and himself being the principal author.
Three senators will complete the committee’s composition.
In a separate interview, Cebu City Association of Barangay Councils president Eugenio Faelnar said it does not really matter to him when the elections will be held.
But several barangay captains confided to him that they would rather have theirs in consonance with the local elections.
That way, they will spend less since they can schedule their campaign sorties along with candidates of local political parties they aligned themselves with.
Del Mar, though, said it will also be impractical to hold the barangay elections along with local and even national elections in 2007 because voters will have to contend with a lot of names to pick from.
He is confident that the House of Representative’s version of the bill postponing barangay elections will be adopted because 2006 is just too close and the country is still in financial and political crisis. (RHM/Sun.Star Cebu/Sunnex)
(August 27, 2005 issue)
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