The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) strongly and unequivocally opposes any move to postpone the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) scheduled for November 2026. Reports that the government intends to defer these elections — and realign the Commission on Elections’ (COMELEC) preparation budget toward other government priorities — represent a grave threat to the foundations of Philippine democracy and must be rejected outright.

Elections are not discretionary events to be deferred at the convenience of those in power. They are constitutional obligations and democratic rights that belong to the Filipino people. The regularity and periodicity of elections is not a procedural nicety — it is the very heartbeat of democratic governance. When elections are held on schedule, mandates are renewed, public servants are held accountable, and the sovereign will of the people is expressed in its most direct form. To tamper with this schedule is to tamper with democracy itself.

Diverting COMELEC’s electoral preparation funds to other government priorities is not merely a budgetary decision. It is a deliberate act of institutional sabotage. The COMELEC’s constitutional mandate is to administer elections — not to serve as a reserve fund for shifting executive priorities. Stripping the commission of resources allocated for a constitutionally mandated election, for the explicit purpose of preventing that election from proceeding, is a clear violation of the prohibition of transfer of budgetary funds under Article VI, Section 25 (5) of the Constitution (Macalintal v. Commission on Elections, G.R. No. 263590, 27 June 2023), and sets a dangerous precedent for executive overreach into the independence of our electoral body.

NAMFREL likewise rejects the invocation of the current Middle East crisis — and its attendant effects on global and local energy prices and supply chains — as sufficient justification for postponement. While we acknowledge that these pressures place genuine burdens on our nation, they do not constitute the kind of extraordinary circumstance that can legally or morally override the people’s right to choose their barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) leaders. The Philippines has held elections through far graver national crises. Economic hardship is not a democratic emergency. It is, if anything, all the more reason to ensure that communities have accountable, properly elected leadership at the most local level.

More troubling still is the pattern this proposed postponement follows. The BSKE has been repeatedly postponed in prior years — and each deferral has ultimately served political and campaign interests rather than the public good. The accumulated effect of these successive postponements has been to deny millions of Filipinos — particularly the youth — their rightful voice in selecting local leaders and to allow incumbents to extend their hold on positions beyond their legitimate mandates. NAMFREL warns that what is dressed up as fiscal prudence is, in practice, a recurring ruse for political entrenchment.

The barangay serves as the primary planning and implementing unit of government policies, plans, programs, projects, and activities in the community, as a forum wherein the collective views of the people may be expressed, crystallized and considered, and where disputes may be amicably settled. As the level of government closest to the people, each voter should be given regularly and without interruption the right to choose the leaders they see and interact with on a daily basis. Elected barangay and SK officials derive their authority from the people who voted for them, for a defined term, and for no longer. Any extension of that term — whether by legislative postponement, executive maneuver, or budgetary manipulation — is a subversion of the democratic mandate and an affront to the constituents those officials are meant to serve. The barangay and SK officials currently holding office do so on borrowed time. The November 2026 BSKE must proceed on schedule.

NAMFREL calls on the Congress of the Philippines to reject any bill seeking to postpone or cancel the November 2026 BSKE. We call on the Executive branch to cease any effort to divert COMELEC’s electoral funds. We call on the COMELEC to defend its institutional independence and proceed with full preparations. And we call on every Filipino citizen to remain vigilant — because democracy lives not only in the casting of a ballot, but in the insistence that the ballot be cast on time.

The Filipino people have waited long enough. ###

DOWNLOAD THE FULL STATEMENT HERE: “NAMFREL calls on Congress and the Executive to uphold the constitutional mandate for periodic, timely elections“