A law calling for the postponement of the barangay elections scheduled in October 2013 that was fixed by law will be unconstitutional, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said yesterday.

While Congress is empowered by the Constitution to fix the date of the election for barangay and sangguniang kabataan officials, there is no provision in the constitution authorizing the lawmakers to postpone the barangay polls which it had previously fixed and the barangay officials duly elected, he said in a press release.

The incumbent barangay and SK officials who want to continue serving must get a new mandate in the election as scheduled by the law through which they were elected, otherwise, any extension of their term
without the electoral mandate will result in an unlawful governance in the absence of the voluntary consent of the electorate, he added.*

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