Postponing barangay polls--again
President Rodrigo Duterte is floating the idea of postponing again the barangay— and presumably the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK)--elections. The barangay and SK polls were supposed to be held in October last year but these were postponed to October this year. Among the reasons for the postponement Congress advanced at that time were:
--Government could save billions of pesos from it;
--So the then “new” President’s hands would not be tied. Under the election law, no appointments to government posts 45 days before a regular election;
--To give time to the full implementation of the SK Reform Act.
There was actually a fourth reason, one advanced by the President but which was not mentioned in the barangay and SK polls postponement measure: drug money might be used in the elections to support bets linked to the illegal drugs trade. Duterte mentioned the same reason in again pushing for the polls’ postponement this year.
“When can we expect to have clean elections, free of the corrupting influence of the money from drugs? This year? I told Senate President (Aquilino Pimentel III) and (House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez) to tell legislators that if we hold the barangay elections now… patay,” the President told the recent general assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines.
The President even claimed that we were already a narco-politics state “since six or seven years ago.” But that claim and his worries need to be validated if these are to be used as reasons for the postponement of the barangay and SK polls considering the damage the move would make on our democratic processes. Government policies should not be based on the mere say-so of a president, no matter how popular he or she may be.
How deeply has narco-politics affected barangay rule? What is the ratio between barangay officials linked to the illegal drugs trade and those who are clean? As for the data that may be gathered on that, how reliable would that be? How were the information sourced?
Months ago, the President had claimed there are already 4 million drug addicts in the country, but data from, say, the Dangerous Drugs Board did not support that contention. That just shows how problematic the use of “narco-politics” as reason to again postpone the barangay and SK polls is.