Pandenng

In June last year, the Supreme Court released a strongly worded ruling, declaring as unconstitutional the repeated postponement of the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

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"The right of suffrage requires the holding of honest, genuine, regular and periodic elections," the SC said. It threw out the rea-sons cited by Congress for yet another postponement of the BSKE, among which was ostensibly to save on costs - an argument that was contradicted by the Commission on Elections, whose chairman said a postponement would cost billions more in public funds.

In its ruling, the SC said any poll postponement must be an exception, based on "genuine reasons" such as those "necessitated by public emergency, but only if and to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation." Destruction caused by a typhoon, for example, may allow that kind of postponement.