Congress stole your election
But by the House’s logic, every captain can say they have unfinished programs. What programs.Miss Gay Barangay 2028.
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But by the House’s logic, every captain can say they have unfinished programs. What programs.Miss Gay Barangay 2028.
They already moved the barangay election once. Supposed to happen last December. They moved it to November this year.
Now November is almost here and the House says: actually, 2028. Two more years.
Comelec is ready. About P8 billion has already gone into preparing for November. Postpone it again and, Comelec says, that money could go to waste.
Beautiful.
They moved the election. Then they moved the election. The reason: barangay captains need more time to finish their programs.
Kap! We already gave you more time! It’s a barangay. You need five years to prove you can collect trash?
They say continuity and stability. Continuity? You know what else gives you continuity? Winning the election. People love you? Fantastic. Run.
Don’t we? We vote for somebody else. That’s also continuity. Continuity of democracy.
But by the House’s logic, every captain can say they have unfinished programs. What programs? Miss Gay Barangay 2028.
By the House’s logic, an election is instability. Huh? What happens in an election?
Kap could lose his chair; that’s what. He might even have to find another job. Terrible instability. For Kap.
Now he knows your name and discovers it in the list for P500. That fear is healthy. Move the election again to 2028; you give him two more years to ignore you.
You know your captain. You know if he works, hides; Congress knows none of this. Yet Congress says give them more time, all of them, good chairman, terrible chairman, very insulting to the good chairman.
Usually we let the people do that.
The voters in 2023 did not vote for keeping Kap. Manimtim until 2028.
Imagine Congress doing it with Bongbong. Six years. Then halfway through: “Actually, seven.” You’d lose your mind! Then: “Maybe eight. We need continuity.”
Everybody would understand immediately. But because it’s only the barangay?
Government should never get used to this. Congress had done it once. They did it again, now they’re getting comfortable.
Nobody is saying this bill is Martial Law but perhaps Filipinos should be suspicious of “Give us more time.”
No. Ask us again. Most days, we are not very powerful.
We stand in line, fill out forms, follow up. We ask the barangay to clear the sidewalk, repair the lights, the canals, to do something about our street because it floods when it rains. We wait. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. Either way, tomorrow morning, Kap is still kap.
Then elections come. For one day, everything is reversed. The congressman waits for you. Your mayor needs you. The captain who asks what barangay you’re from suddenly calls you “boss.”
There’s a reason we vote in classrooms. We sit, look at the names and decide whether we learned anything at all.
In a public school classroom! Plastic chairs. An electric fan doing its best. That’s where we put the power. Not in the Palace. Not in Batasan. In a room where the barangay captain is no more powerful than the man whose complaint he ignored because “’Di ka naman botante dito” and everybody gets one damn ballot.
Guy with eight cars, one ballot. Guy watching those cars gets one, too. And so do you. The politician who just shook your hand gets the same one ballot except yours is the one he came there hoping to get.
For a short damn while.
That is election day. When government does not tell the Filipino what will happen next. The Filipino tells government.
They make you wait for that too. As if elections are a privilege they let you have.
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