The barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections scheduled for November 2, 2026 have been moved to November 2028, after President Marcos signed Republic Act 12326 fixing the terms of barangay and SK officials at five years.
Those elected in October 2023 will therefore remain in office through the May 2028 national and local elections before they themselves have to face the voters again.
President Marcos said the longer terms should provide stability and give barangay and SK officials sufficient time to complete their programs. There are reasonable arguments for giving local officials more time to govern instead of repeatedly putting them through elections.
Still, you have to wonder about the politics of extending the terms of tens of thousands of grassroots officials through a presidential election.
We are not the only ones wondering. Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) chairman Roland Simbulan says the administration could benefit politically from keeping incumbent barangay officials in place through the 2028 national elections. The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) has also opposed the postponement.
Barangay elections are officially nonpartisan, but Philippine politics does not suddenly become nonpolitical when you reach the barangay hall. The barangay captain knows the families, who needs medicine, a job, ayuda, a clearance or assistance from City Hall. He knows who belongs to which organization, who can bring people to a meeting and, inevitably, who votes where.
That intimacy is both the strength and weakness of barangay government.
There is another oddity in all this. For all the money and authority entrusted to barangay officials, the legal qualifications for the job are remarkably modest: citizenship, residency, voter registration, minimum age and the ability to read and write Filipino or a local language or dialect. No degree, civil-service eligibility or demonstrated knowledge of budgeting, procurement or public administration is required.
Marunong bumasa at sumulat.
To be fair, we don’t require a college degree from mayors, congressmen or senators either. You don’t even need one to become President of the Philippines. Perhaps that explains a few things.
But the barangay is where government becomes intensely personal. These officials handle public money, approve expenditures, participate in procurement and exercise authority over people who are literally their neighbors.
We used to think of corruption as something that happened in high places, involving presidents and their cronies, Cabinet secretaries, generals, congressmen, governors, mayors and big contractors. Somewhere along the way, it worked its way farther down the political and bureaucratic ladder until even the smallest unit of government was no longer immune.
There is no shortage of examples. The Office of the Ombudsman has prosecuted barangay officials for kickbacks, rigged procurement, misuse of public funds and ghost employees. A Manila barangay chairman was convicted after demanding and receiving money from a supplier handling barangay projects. Officials of another Manila barangay were convicted over procurement of a projector and sound system in which the purchase order identifying the supplier had already been approved before the scheduled bidding. Another chairman was convicted of malversation involving wages paid in the name of a dead street sweeper.
The Sangguniang Kabataan has not been spared. Two Makati SK chairpersons were suspended this year over separate alleged irregularities. One was suspended for six months after allegedly demanding a 20-percent kickback from a supplier for a Halloween project. The other was suspended for three months in a case involving allegedly falsified signatures on documents, including that of an SK kagawad who was in Canada. The DILG said criminal complaints would be pursued.
The SK was supposed to introduce young Filipinos to leadership, public service and democratic participation. Unfortunately, young people can also learn from the political environment into which we put them.
Covid showed us something more troubling: what could happen when considerable authority was suddenly pushed all the way down to the barangay. During the lockdowns, barangay officials became neighborhood policemen, border guards and welfare officers almost overnight. They manned checkpoints, enforced curfews and quarantine restrictions, monitored movement and helped administer government assistance. Many did difficult and necessary work. Others demonstrated what petty power without enough restraint could look like.
In March 2020, five alleged curfew violators in Barangay Gatid in Santa Cruz, Laguna were locked inside a dog cage. Two were minors. Police said the barangay chairman allegedly threatened to shoot them if they refused to enter. Criminal complaints for violation of the child-protection law, grave threats and coercion followed.
Then there was ayuda. By the end of 2020, the DILG said it had investigated 367 Social Amelioration Program-related cases involving 782 complainants and 1,278 suspects. The allegations included graft, robbery-extortion and grave threats, while other complaints involved beneficiary lists and the distribution of assistance. The Ombudsman also ordered the preventive suspension of 89 barangay captains over alleged irregularities involving the first tranche of SAP.
These cases don’t indict every barangay official. They expose the danger of putting public money, assistance and considerable discretion in the hands of local officials without enough accountability.
Who gets ayuda? Who gets a barangay job? Who supplies the barangay? Who gets the project? Whose relative gets hired? Who gets endorsed to City Hall?
And somewhere above this ecosystem sits the mayor.
Nobody needs a political science degree to understand why barangay captains can be useful to mayors, congressmen and national candidates. Philippine political machinery doesn’t begin in some air-conditioned campaign headquarters. Much of it is built from the ground up, street by street, precinct by precinct, barangay by barangay.
Which is why the timing of this extension matters. The officials whose terms have just been extended will still be sitting in their barangay halls when Filipinos choose their next President, vice president and other national and local officials in May 2028.
That doesn’t prove there was a political bargain behind the extension. But it is reason enough to ask why the voters themselves were not allowed to decide who should still be sitting in those barangay halls by then.
Republic Act 12326 does contain reforms worth acknowledging. Barangay officials are limited to two consecutive terms in the same position, while SK officials remain limited to one. Continuing training and capacity building are mandated.
But there is a difference between deciding how long future officials should serve and changing the tenure of people already elected under a different timetable.
The next BSKE was originally scheduled for December 2025. Congress moved it to November 2026. Now it has been moved to November 2028.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalintal, who successfully challenged an earlier BSKE postponement before the Supreme Court, is questioning the new law as well. He argues that the cumulative delay has prolonged the tenure of incumbent officials without requiring them to obtain a fresh mandate from the electorate.
There is precedent for questioning these postponements. In 2023, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the law that had moved the December 2022 BSKE to October 2023, ruling that it violated the freedom of suffrage and failed substantive due-process requirements. Congress has broad authority over barangay elections and terms, the Court said, but that authority is not unlimited.
Justice Marvic Leonen was already describing repeated postponements as an ‘alarming trend.’
Yet here we are again.
The new law became public only days before the scheduled September 28 start of the filing of certificates of candidacy. Comelec had been preparing for an election required by existing law. Then, practically at the door of the filing period, there was no election.
Maybe most incumbents are doing good work. Maybe their constituents would have reelected them anyway.
Then let them vote.
That is the part that gets lost whenever politicians debate whether three, four or five years is the ideal term for a barangay official. The term belongs to the office. The mandate belongs to the voter.
Congress can change the first.
It should be very careful about extending the second. ###