Delay favors political clans

Postponing the 2026 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) was not just a simple deferment or schedule change — it lets current government officials keep their grip on power.

Although the delay looks harmless, it preserves the dominance of established political families.

Professor Roland Simbulan, head of the Center for People Empowerment and Governance (CenPEG), put the pieces together for Congress’ and the Executive’s recent move to suspend the BSKE until after the crucial 2028 presidential polls in a Straight Talk online interview.

Elections let people keep the leaders who do their jobs and remove those who do not. For this reason, Simbulan said, the Constitution set fixed terms and regular elections; thus a delay that stretches term limits denies voters their right to pick their leaders.

He rejected the claim that more time in office strengthens the accountability of barangay officials, which the Palace used as an excuse to sign the law resetting the BSKE polls.

Simbulan said we have elections so power can pass peacefully to those people trusted to do better. He noted that the barangay and SK polls had been moved several times before, including in 2016 under then-President Rodrigo Duterte, so the current postponement has become something of a habit.

According to Simbulan, with the postponement, the administration stands to gain politically big-time. The 2028 national elections are coming, and with the barangay the smallest and closest government unit to the people, its officials can deliver the grassroots votes.

Keeping these officials in their posts with the benefits they derive from it, he said, will make them beholden to the national leaders whom they will likely repay with their full support in 2028.

He said the gift is larger than it appears. The law that moved the BSKE election to 13 November 2028 also made the next term of barangay officials five years long instead of four.

Barangay officials will owe their longer stay to the powers that be, not their neighbors. A barangay post brings in a steady income and some influence, and anyone who is in office long enough can also bring in their relatives.

This, Simbulan said, is how dynasties are born. Dynasties often begin at the barangay level, where the same family is in office for generations, and then they move up to higher posts. A longer term at the bottom, therefore, gives the family more time to prepare for the next step.

Simbulan also pointed to the timing and the cost. Congress passed the measure only weeks before the scheduled 2 November BSKE, and the law was signed days before candidates were to file their certificates. By then, he said, the Commission on Elections had spent nearly P8 billion on preparations.

The timing shows the national leadership treats barangay elections cavalierly and forgets that it is a basic part of democracy.

The Supreme Court in 2025, Simbulan recalled, ruled that the Constitution lets Congress set the length of barangay terms, and it kept that ruling even after a request to reconsider. He said the same justices are likely to decide the new case the same way.

Congress has failed for 39 years to pass the law the 1987 Constitution provides to end dynastic family control of the political system. In Simbulan’s view, the cause is a conflict of interest, since lawmakers are asked to pass a law that will hurt their own families.

He said that about 80 percent of Congress are members of political clans, four groups of siblings sit among the 24 senators, and almost 55 percent of party-list representatives belong to dynasties.

The House version of the anti-dynasty bill would only make the problem worse because it limits relatives in the same government level but lets them hold posts at different levels.

Since the bills came from the Speaker and the majority leader, both of whom belong to dynasties, he said the result was unsurprising. He placed more hope in the Senate bill of Senator Risa Hontiveros, which he said would truly limit dynasties, although he expects an uphill battle when the two versions are joined.

A lasting answer will have to come from the people, as it did in Europe, where citizen groups and political parties built on clear principles gradually displaced the old noble families.

The fight will be difficult. Those outside the dynastic system often lack the resources to compete with wealthy political families that have built an impregnable presence in the communities they control.

Breaking the dynastic cycle, however, is essential to confronting the endemic corruption that has long plagued government.