Senate bill moving barangay, SK polls to December 2023 OK’d on 3rd reading

The Senate on Tuesday passed on third and final reading a bill postponing the 2022 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) for a year.
 
Seventeen senators backed the passage of Senate Bill 1306, while opposition members Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III and Risa Hontiveros voted against it.
 
Earlier, Pimentel said the justifications for the proposed postponement of the 2022 BSKE “are not sufficient and are not good reasons."
 
SB 1306 seeks to move the date of the 2022 BSKE to the second Monday of December 2023.
 
During the period of amendments, Hontiveros proposed changing the date of the election under SB 1306 from December 2023 to May 2023.
 
This was not accepted by Senate electoral reforms and people's participation chairperson Imee Marcos, the bill’s sponsor, but she assured Hontiveros that it would be raised before the bicameral conference committee.
 
On September 20, the House of Representatives approved the counterpart bill on third and final reading. 
 
Since 2016, the barangay and SK polls have been repeatedly postponed.
 
The October 2016 barangay and SK polls were postponed to October 2017. From there, it was postponed to May 2018, which was again reset to December 2022. — VBL, GMA News