The Duterte administration’s insistence on replacing incumbent elected barangay officials with appointive officers-in-charge (OICs) is a blatant violation of the Constitution and existing laws on barangay elections.
The appointment of OICs is an aberration which supplants the popular electoral will.
The Constitution classifies barangay officials as “local elective officials”, and consequently, they are installed to office by electoral mandate, not by appointment.
Section 8 of Article X of the 1987 Constitution unequivocally provides:
“SECTION 8. The term of office of elective local officials, except barangay officials, which shall be determined by law, shall be three years and no such official shall serve for more than three consecutive terms. Voluntary renunciation of the office for any length of time shall not be considered as an interruption in the continuity of his service for the full term for which he was elected.”
Under the foregoing provision, while the Constitution fixed the term of office of other local elective officials like governors, vice governors, provincial board members, municipal and city mayors, municipal and city vice mayors and municipal and city councilors, to “three years and no such official shall serve for more than three consecutive terms”, the term of office of barangay officials “shall be determined by law”.
While ordinarily the term of office of barangay officials is also fixed by law to three years which shall not exceed more than three consecutive terms, there was a time under R.A. No. 8524 (February 1998) that the term of office of barangay officials was increased from three years to five years, but reverted to three years under R.A. No. 9164 (March 2002).
Due to the classification by the Constitution of barangay officials as “elective local officials”, the various laws pertinent to the election of barangay officials provide for “hold over”.
Republic Act No. 10923 which was approved on 15 October 2016 postponing the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections to the fourth Monday of October 2017 provides for hold over reading: “[u]ntil their successors shall have been duly elected and qualified, all incumbent barangay officials shall remain in office, unless sooner removed or suspended for cause.”
Similarly, other statutes on barangay elections like R.A. No. 6653 (May 1988), R.A. No. 9164 (March 2002) and R.A. No. 9340 (September 2005), also invariably provide for hold over.
Hold over provisions recognize that elected barangay officials shall remain in office until the election, not appointment, of their successors.
Barangay officials suspected of complicity in drug-related offenses or any criminal act must be prosecuted and removed for cause pursuant to law, not substituted with OICs.
EDCEL C. LAGMAN