EDITORIAL - Another BSKE postponement

The Supreme Court ruling in June 2023 was unequivocal, and peppered with the word “unconstitutional.” The ruling was over the postponement yet again of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled on Dec. 5, 2022.

The BSKE postponement under Republic Act 11935, which President Marcos signed, was “a transgression on the people’s right of suffrage” and a “grave violation of the Constitution,” the Supreme Court declared. “RA 11935 violates the freedom of suffrage as it failed to satisfy the requisites of the substantive aspect of the due process clause of the Constitution,” the SC stated.

In its summary, the high tribunal stressed that “the free and meaningful exercise of the right to vote, as protected and guaranteed by the Constitution, requires the holding of genuine periodic elections which must be held at intervals which are not unduly long, and which ensure that the authority of government continues to be based on the free expression of the will of electors.” The SC statement placed “genuine periodic elections” in bold typeface.

It acknowledged that certain circumstances such as a public emergency or the need to protect the right of suffrage may warrant the postponement of elections, but only for a reasonable period that is “not unduly long,” and only as an exception.

“Reasons such as election fatigue, purported resulting divisiveness, shortness of existing term, and/or other superficial or farcical reasons, alone, may not serve as important, substantial, or compelling reasons to justify the postponement of the elections,” the SC said.

And yet both chambers of the 19th Congress, as usual at the eleventh hour when they think no one is looking like in the bicameral conference on the annual budget, are again moving for yet another one-year term extension for their grassroots political leaders. Congress even wants to give the BSK officials a longer term of four years with opportunity for reelection.

In its ruling, the SC had explained that “the constitutional issue raised under the circumstances surrounding this case is capable of repetition yet evading review and thus, demands formulation of controlling principles to guide the bench, the bar, and the public.”

Sure enough, the circumstances are being repeated today.

The ratification of the measure validates perceptions, for which the 19th Congress has gained notoriety, that lawmakers will always find ways to go around laws, rules and SC orders, and even to subvert the Constitution.

President Marcos signed into law RA 11935, only to see it invalidated by the SC, with strong admonitions against violating the Constitution. If the President goes along with this latest attempt to again extend the terms of BSK officials, he will be complicit in what the Supreme Court has already ruled to be an unconstitutional act.