MANILA, Philippines — As Congress prepares to discuss in a bicameral conference committee a proposal to postpone the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (BSK) elections by extending officials’ terms to five years, concerns are again being raised over the accountability of leaders in the Philippines’ smallest political units.
The House of Representatives approved House Bill No. 10971 with 211 votes on Sept. 8, while its counterpart, Senate Bill No. 2387, was approved Sept. 14 with the concurrence of 13 senators.
READ: House OKs bill setting barangay, SK execs’ term to five years
But for Dr. Alicor Panao, data scientist for the Inquirer and an associate professor at the University of the Philippines, the latest financial data on the country’s 42,035 barangays raise a more significant question.
“What happens to accountability when citizens have limited information about public spending and are repeatedly denied the opportunity to judge those who manage it?” he said in an analysis of the Commission on Audit’s (COA) 2024 Financial Report for Local Governments.
Panao pointed out that only 20,969 barangays, or 49.88%, have submitted financial profiles. This means that for residents of more than half of all barangays in the Philippines, information on their respective local governments’ assets, liabilities, income and expenses “is not reflected in the national financial picture.”
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“The differences across regions are considerable,” he said, citing the latest available data, as the COA report has not yet been released.
Compliance reached 91.31% in the Ilocos Region but only 17.70% in Western Visayas. The Zamboanga Peninsula recorded 28.73%, while Metro Manila was at 37.80%.
Panao pointed out that “in the principal-agent model of electoral accountability, citizens supposedly entrust authority and public funds to elected officials, then use elections to reward or sanction them.”
“When elections are postponed, that mechanism is weakened,” he said.
For Panao, when elections are postponed, officials face less immediate pressure to provide citizens with information about their performance, while voters lose an opportunity to pass judgment on officials whose performance may fall short.
“The Commission on Elections has already spent about P8 billion preparing for the BSK elections,” he said, pointing out that a postponement would “carry a less visible cost by extending the time incumbents exercise authority without having to face the electorate.” /dm
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