Stolen Mandate

The ink on Republic Act No. 12326 barely had time to dry before the machinery of local democracy ground to a halt. Just days before the filing of candidacies, Congress and Malacañang bypassed the ballot box, effectively handing sitting barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials an unearned two-year extension.

Let’s not dress this up as fiscal prudence or a necessary breather for exhausted voters. It is a legislative appointment masquerading as a postponement.

If you want to talk about fiscal sense, look at the Comelec warehouses. The commission was already at 90 percent operational readiness. That is PHP 8 billion in public funds spent on ballots, logistics, and deployment — now sitting idle, quietly turning into expensive paperweights.

The Supreme Court already drew a line in the sand on this exact issue. In its 2023 landmark ruling, Macalintal v. COMELEC, the High Court made it painfully clear that administrative convenience and budget excuses do not justify hijacking a constitutionally mandated election. Yet here we are, watching the executive and legislative branches ignore precedent to deliver a term extension nobody asked for — well, nobody except the incumbents.

Surveys show eight out of ten Filipinos actually wanted to vote this November. They wanted the chance to boot out abusive, absentee, or corrupt village chiefs. Instead, they are denied their most basic right of recall until 2028.

The political contradictions are dizzying. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla himself recently warned that the barangay system is a breeding ground for corruption, pointing to unchecked discretionary funds as localized “pork barrels.” RA 12326 ignores this reality entirely. It gifts these same officials more time in power with zero added vetting or qualification requirements.

The youth are quiet collateral damage. With the SK elections frozen, many current officials and young voters will simply age out of their demographic bracket. We are paralyzing genuine youth leadership. When those SK seats inevitably fall vacant, they won’t be filled by a grassroots vote — they will be filled by mayoral appointment.

We need to stop pretending we don’t see the calendar. Moving the BSKE to November 2028 aligns village tenure perfectly with the run-up to the next presidential and midterm cycle. Barangay captains are the ultimate ground-level vote mobilizers. By keeping incumbents beholden to national patrons via legislative term gifts, the political establishment secures a massive, state-funded ward network just in time for 2028.

There is only one road out of this mess, and it runs through Padre Faura. The Supreme Court must urgently issue an injunction on the pending Petitions for Certiorari before Comelec permanently disassembles its precinct operations. If term lengths are to be altered by statute, basic jurisprudence demands the “prospective” standard — apply it only to incoming officials, never retroactively to those elected under a strict four-year mandate.

Beyond the courts, it is time to actually professionalize the frontline. Require Civil Service eligibility for barangay administrators and treasurers. We need structural competence, not perpetual holdovers.

Since 2005, we have normalized treating grassroots elections as optional bargaining chips. Every deferral erodes the democratic habit a little more, cementing a quiet, dangerous precedent — the Filipino voter is only consulted when the political class finds it convenient.