Bangsamoro youth speak out

Under our country’s election laws, a scheduled election exercise can be postponed, cancelled or reset to another date.

- MARICHU A. VILLANUEVA

Section 5 of the Omnibus Election Code empowers the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to decide whether or not to postpone any scheduled election if there is any widespread acts of violence or terrorism or force majeure.

Two scheduled elections were reset one after the other, though not due to any of the three reasons.

At our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday, Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia cited this amid issues on the resetting of two elections originally scheduled for later this year. A veteran election lawyer before he was appointed to head the seven-man poll body, Garcia conceded this Comelec’s mandate to other acts of three coequal branches of the government. Supposedly an independent constitutional body, the Comelec though has no other option but to comply.

On the same day of our Kapihan news forum, the Supreme Court (SC) handed down its ruling as final and executory to postpone the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) Parliament elections. From Oct.13, or next Monday, the SC ordered the Comelec to hold it not later than March 2026.

On the other hand, it was the 19th Congress that postponed the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) slated originally on Dec.1 this year. Under Republic ‘Act (RA) 12232 signed by President Ferdinand “Bong-bong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM), it will be held instead on the first Monday of November 2026 - which falls on Nov. 2.

A very compelling opinion piece about the SC ruling on the BARMM Parliament elections was published by the Mindanao Varsitarian, the official publication of the Mindanao State University (MSU) in Marawi City. It was written by Al-sulkry Abdullatif who, from his Facebook account, is a young man in his 20's and a student at MSU.