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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Sunday, March 18, 2018
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BACOLOD City – Sen. Cynthia Villar said attempts to once again postpone the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections are only giving “false hopes to the people.”
Villar was in the city on Friday to attend the 1st Philippine Sugarcane Farming Mechanization Expo as a guest speaker at the Sugar Regulatory Administration compound.
“Tuloy na ang SK and barangay elections,” Villar told media members. “I don’t know why Congress is insisting for its (deferral of elections) passing. It’s creating false hopes to the people.”
The barangay and SK elections were postponed two times already. The October 2016 polls were first deferred to October 2017, and then to May this year.
Rep. Johnny Pimentel (Surigao del Sur) and Rep. Reynaldo Umali (Oriental Mindoro) this year have separately filed bills to reschedule the elections.
Pimentel wants to move the local elections to October 2018 while Umali wants to suspend it until May 2019.
On March 12, the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms voted 17-0 to set the elections in October 2018, and 14-2 to suspend it.
Umali has said he pushed for the suspension considering the proposed shift to a federal system of government in the country.
House Bill 7378, another postponement measure merging four similar bills, was passed on its second reading on Wednesday.
But Villar said the Senate session will recess on March 21. It will resume on May 15.
This means that the Senate has only three remaining days to pass the postponement bill.
“Kaya mo bang magpasa ng batas [within] three days?” Villar asked rhetorically.
Villar added that the postponement bill does not have a counterpart in the Senate./PN
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