Go out and vote
THE Filipino electorate goes to the polls anew Monday to elect new barangay and youth officials across this Southeast Asian nation of more than 110 million people.
Commission Elections (Comelec) records show that over 1.41 million candidates are vying for the 672,432 positions in the 2023 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE).
Incumbent barangay and youth council officials have been holding their posts for five years now, which is beyond their three-year term, because the twin polls had been postponed twice.
Today’s election, which is “democracy in action,” starts at 6 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m., with the counting of votes starting at 6 p.m., according to the poll body’s calendar of activities.
But unlike previous Philippine elections, national and local, which were fully computerized, the country’s barangay and youth council elections are still done manually.
Note that there’s now a snowballing move in the two-chamber Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – to computerize even the village and SK ballotings.
The move is gaining more and more supporters not only in the halls of Congress but also in various parts of the Philippines, according to political observers and analysts.
Hopefully, the results of Monday’s manual election will prove that the electorate is moving towards political maturity, which is seen to address the various problems confronting the elections.
“Dapat magiging politically mature na ang mga botanteng Pinoy para mawala na ang nakakabuwisit na pamimili at pagbebenta ng boto tuwing may eleksyon sa bansa,” an irate elderly voter said.
Thus, there’s a need to elect the best and deserving candidates.
Let’s then go out and vote today.
