Press Release
September 30, 2007

SHORTENING OF BARANGAY POLL DEFERMENT FROM
TWO YEARS TO ONE YEAR ALSO UNACCEPTABLE

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said the proponents of the postponement of the Oct. 29, 2007 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections should now drop altogether the ill-conceived proposal instead of giving false hopes that it can still be approved by Congress.

"If this were a basketball or football game, they have already lost by default given the full-blast preparations of the Commission of the Elections for the political exercise. Or if this were a trip, they have already been left behind by the train."

The minority leader pointed out that the holding of the elections has become irreversible at this stage because the candidates for barangay and SK positions have started filing the certificates of candidacy Saturday (Sept. 29) while the Commission on Elections has already spent a sizeable portion of the P2.2 billion budget released for the purpose by the Department of Budget and Management.

But Pimentel said that while he is an advocate of poll automation, it is impractical to computerize the elections in 43,000 barangays because the votes can be counted within a short period of time and the winners in every village known even if done manually.

"I do not see the rationality of computerizing the barangay election because the entire process of voting and counting of votes can be done and completed right in the barangay. In other words the results are not transmitted from the polling precincts to the municipal, provincial, regional and national levels," the opposition senator explained.

"This is unlike in the national and local elections where the returns are moved manually from the precincts to the municipal, provincial, regional and national levels. Automation is needed specially in the senatorial and presidential elections when there are the movements of the results from one layer to another which makes the whole process vulnerable to cheating."

Pimentel also cited the following reasons why it is too late to defer the Barangay and SK elections:

1. Malacañang and DBM have already assured there is money for the elections and P138 million had already been spent for the registration of new youth voters.

2. The bidding process for the supply of election materials and printing of official ballots and other official forms is already in progress.

3. A big number of incumbent barangay chairmen all over the country have already served their third and last term, making their continued stay in office more legally untenable.

4. All chairmen and council members of the SK elected on May 15, 2002 are already overaged.

5. The Barangay and SK elections had already been postponed twice before.

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