Comelec seeks delay of village polls

THE MAY 9 elections generated hundreds of tons of trash, including this pile of campaign materials in Cebu City that a city worker prepares for hauling. JUNJIE MENDOZA/CEBU DAILY NEWS

Saying the people could suffer from “election fatigue,” the chair of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Wednesday announced that the poll body would propose the postponement of village and youth council elections scheduled in October.

In a media forum, Comelec chair Andres Bautista said the poll body would make formal its proposal to delay the October elections when Congress convenes in July.

“We will discuss it with the new chair of the House committee on electoral reforms and suffrage and its counterpart in the Senate,” Bautista said at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

He said people could already be suffering from “election or voter fatigue,” the main reason for the proposal to postpone the October elections.

He said the schedule of village and youth council elections made the exercise too close to the May 9 national elections, which Bautista described as “the most divisive and vicious” in the country’s history, though “the most organized and efficient” so far.

“There are also talks of holding a constitutional convention [so] how many elections are we going to have [in a short span of time]?” said Bautista, referring to plans of presumptive President-elect Rodrigo Duterte to amend the Constitution.

He said the October elections, which would be held in over 42,000 villages, would be “very labor intensive” since the elections would be done manually and voter turnout was usually low. “There could be election fatigue,” he said.

Bautista said election, or voter fatigue, was characterized by apathy or indifference that the electorate could feel if required to vote too often.

He also said village elections could be expensive, with the government spending “billions of pesos” for them. The Comelec spent at least P3.4 billion for village elections three years ago.

“Aside from fatigue, holding barangay elections is expensive mainly because we have to pay more teachers that will serve as board of election tellers,” he said.

The Comelec’s plan to push for the postponement of the barangay elections seemed to support a move in Congress seeking to delay the balloting for two years.

In February this year, Pasay City Rep. Emi Calixto-Rubiano filed a bill seeking to reset the barangay elections from Oct. 10, 2016 to Oct. 8, 2018.

In filing the measure, which aimed to amend Republic Act No. 9340, Rubiano also cited the proximity of the national elections to the barangay balloting. She also said elected barangay officials “should be insulated from the influence of partisan politics.”

Three years ago, President Aquino signed into law a measure that postponed youth council elections originally set on Oct. 28, 2013 to allow Congress to reform the youth council system.