In medical emergencies, response teams conduct triage, assessing who among the patients have the most urgent need for attention.
The Supreme Court may want to implement a similar system in dealing with the many cases that call for its action. The SC can start with the legal challenge against yet another one-year postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections or BSKE.
President Marcos signed into law last August Republic Act 12232, which not only reset the BSKE from Dec. 1 this year to Nov. 2, 2026, but also gave BSK officials a longer term of four years from the current three.
RA 12232 effectively extended the terms of the current BSK officials by a year through an overly long postponement of the vote. These are acts that the SC had struck down as unconstitutional the first time that Marcos signed an earlier law, RA 11935, which postponed the BSKE scheduled in December 2022.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal, who successfully challenged RA 11935 before the SC, is also spearheading the legal challenge against RA 12232, the latest move of the 19th Congress and the executive to pander to their grassroots political operators.
A key argument in the postponement of the BSKE this year is to give full attention to the first-ever parliamentary election in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The BARMM vote, however, is no longer pushing through, after the SC struck down the redistribution of seats in the BARMM parliament following the exclusion of Sulu from the region.
Bowing to the SC, Commission on Elections Chairman George Garcia said the BARMM vote has been reset to March 31, 2026. With the postponement, P1 billion worth of ballots, other election paraphernalia and Comelec preparations have gone to waste, Garcia said. Replacing the wasted items will also require additional funds, which could be greater than P1 billion.
In the case of the BSKE this December, a one-year postponement will cost taxpayers an additional P4.3 billion, Garcia said last month.
In the absence of a temporary restraining order from the SC, the Comelec has stopped preparations for the BSKE. But the SC might issue a ruling similar to the one on RA 11935, in which case it will save billions in public funds – and a lot of confusion – if it would issue a TRO on this year’s BSKE postponement.
Better yet, the SC might want to hand down its ruling on the case, giving the Comelec and other stakeholders sufficient time to prepare if the decision favors Macalintal’s challenge.
Trillions in public funds have already gone down the drain due to corruption in flood control projects. If only to save several precious billions, the BSKE postponement case deserves urgent judicial action.