Senate approves bill postponing barangay, SK polls

File Photo
File Photo

VOTING 21-0, senators on Monday, September 30, unanimously approved on third and final reading a bill postponing the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections to December 2022.

If signed into law, this will be the third time that the Barangay and SK elections will be postponed under the Duterte administration.

At the House of Representatives, the committee on suffrage and electoral reforms approved its report on several bills seeking to postpone the Barangay and SK elections.

The House version, however, seeks to hold the elections in May 2023.

The Barangay and SK elections, last held in May 2018 after it was postponed from October 2017, are scheduled for May 2020.

Senate Bill 1043 seeks to move the political exercise to December 5, 2022. The elected officials would assume office at noon of January 1, 2023.

The subsequent synchronized Barangay and SK elections shall be held on the first Monday of December 2025 and every three years thereafter.

If the approved Senate bill is followed, instead of the House version, there will be two elections in 2022, the presidential elections in May and the synchronized Barangay and SK elections in December.

The Senate earlier favored a bill similar to the House version, which will set the Barangay and SK elections on the second Monday of May 2023.

During the debates, however, the senators agreed on the December 2022 schedule as they found the five-year extension of office for incumbent village and youth leaders too long.

The postponement of the Barangay and SK elections is one of the priority measures that President Rodrigo Duterte enumerated during his State of the Nation Address on July 22, 2019. (MVI/SunStar Philippines)

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