PUV consolidation deadline final - LTFRB

EDITORIAL

The deadline for the consolidation of public utility vehicles (PUV) is Dec. 31 despite transport strikes, according to the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).
    “The deadline will stay on Dec. 31, 2023. Beyond that, the LTFRB will not issue a franchise anymore,” LTFRB chair Teofilo Guadiz said in a briefing Thursday.
    Part of the government’s PUV modernization program is the franchise consolidation requirement, in which drivers and operators of traditional jeepneys and utility van express units must consolidate into cooperatives and corporations before Dec. 31, or else lose their jobs.
    All provisional authority and certificates of public convenience will expire on Dec. 31, unless they are covered by the extension to be granted by the LTFRB for consolidated units.
    This means that non-compliant jeepneys that do not consolidate will not be allowed to ply their routes after the deadline passes.
    The LTFRB said they have eased the application process, as operators only need a petition for consolidation by Dec. 31 and their provisional authority would be extended.
    The required number of members for the cooperative has also been reduced from 15 to 10 members.
    The agency is also studying proposals allowing two cooperatives to ply one route instead of having only one corporation.
    The LTFRB assured that there will be no transport crisis even if only around 65 percent of units nationwide have been consolidated.
    LTFRB technical division chief Joel Bolano said they have contingency plans.
    “Our objective is for the gap (in supply and demand of PUVs after Dec. 31) to be non-existent or manageable,” he added.
    Meanwhile, Land Transportation Office chief Vigor Mendoza said they are planning to file criminal charges against transport leaders and workers who allegedly coerced colleagues to stop operating following the recently concluded weeklong strike.
 

EDITORIAL

Comelec to Congress: Voter re-registration

The Commission on Elections appealed to the congress on Wednesday to allow a re-registration of voters to establish a more accurate list for the 2028 elections.
    Comelec chairman George Erwin Garcia urged political parties’ representatives to call out legislators to allow re-registration of voters and to use new technology to improve voter identification during the     “Updates on Political Party Institutionalization and the 2025 National and Local Elections” conference held at The Bayleaf Intramuros in Manila.
    “In 2026, let’s annul the list of voters. Let’s convince Congress, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Let’s annul the entire list of voters in the entire country,” the chairman said.
Garcia proposed a month of general registration of voters to determine an accurate number of Filipinos who can vote in the upcoming elections.
    “This is to find out if there are really 68 million voters in the country. So at least, we’ll be back to zero in 2028,” Garcia said.
    Garcia stated the Comelec is currently using an Automated Fingerprint Identification System or AFIS, a system that the poll body uses to cross-match the biometrics data registrations of voters as part of efforts to eliminate double and multiple registrants.
    The chairman added that AFIS detected more than 491,000 double and multiple registrations prior to the 2023 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections.
    The Comelec said the agency aims to improve the voter identification system by using new technologies to ensure transparency and organization.
    “A lot has changed even if you say that no person has the same fingerprint of another, a lot has changed in that person’s situation,” Garcia said.
    “The question is how do we determine the accuracy of the system, and that’s what we want to know before we conduct a special general registration, allow the government to procure AFIS,” he added.
Garcia believes that the changes would be an avenue to address the problem of double and multiple registrations, as well as other possible election issues.
    Garcia was among the speakers at the event, along with Professor Julio C. Teehankee and Director Efraim Bag-id, which was initiated by Political Participation for Greater Electoral Integrity (PARTICIPATE), a non-partisan, pro-democracy coalition “dedicated to engage and empower the political participation of Filipinos, endeavors to bring together representatives from national and regional political parties, top party-list organizations, Comelec officials, and the media.”
    Efforts to strengthen and institutionalize political parties are part of the forum’s discussion.

EDITORIAL

Post-mortem of the barangay, SK elections

Its relevance may have been understated at times, but the 2023 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE) is significant in so many ways.
    It’s the first BSKE in the Philippines in five years, the first large-scale poll conducted by the George Garcia-led Commission on Elections and the first nationwide election under a Marcos presidency.
    The polls are over, canvassing has concluded in all 42,001 villages, and the turnover between outgoing and incoming officials has begun. There were hiccups here and there, but the commission believes the October 30 vote was a success.
    More importantly, the election’s conduct and its aftermath are likely to cause ripples in the midterm.
    While the Comelec is independent of three main branches of government, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was not totally hands-off. His most significant contribution was signing into law the bill that rescheduled the electoral exercise once slated for December 2022 to October 2023.
    Watchdogs decried the postponement, especially because it wasn’t the first time that it happened. The polls were supposed to be held in May 2020, but former president Rodrigo Duterte also moved to push back the date of the elections.
    Veteran lawyer Romulo Macalintal challenged Marcos in the Supreme Court, and won. The High Court handed the President his first legal defeat in office. It said Republic Act No. 11935 was unconstitutional, and its enactment amounted to a grave abuse of discretion.
    The landmark ruling came out in June 2023, which meant the postponement had already happened. The High Court nonetheless enumerated criteria so that elections in the future won’t be postponed for trivial reasons (after all, some lawmakers justified the postponement, saying that the country was still healing from the divisive 2022 presidential polls).
    The Supreme Court also ruled that after 2023, the next village-based elections should be held in December 2025.
    Election winners are left with a two-year term, shorter than the three-year term that barangay officials usually get.
    Aspirants for public office were undeterred by the shorter term. The Comelec received 1.41 million certificates of candidacy this election cycle to fill in the 672,432 seats up for grabs. That was a 23% increase from the 1.14 million COCs submitted in 2018, the last time the BSKE was held.
    The poll body – under past leaderships and in previous elections – faced mounting criticisms about alleged complacency, as candidates became more emboldened to campaign prematurely and buy votes.
    From the get-go, Chairman Garcia wanted to send the message that the Comelec means business, and that his leadership is all about reforms.
    The Garcia commission reinterpreted a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that took away the punishment for premature campaigning. The new Comelec said the doctrine that arose from that landmark resolution only applies to automated elections, not manual ones like the 2023 BSKE. It meant candidates wooing voters before the campaign period started could face repercussions.
    The poll body also made a permanent Comelec committee – named Kontra Bigay – to go after vote-buying offenders. That panel essentially sought to simplify the process of lodging complaints, and removed bureaucratic bottlenecks that complicated the poll body’s crackdown efforts.
    The commission has flagged 8,474 candidates for potential unlawful electioneering, and ordered them to submit an explanation. It also slapped disqualification petitions against 294 BSKE aspirants.
It remains to be seen if any embattled candidate – when all remedies in the justice system have been exhausted – will actually face the full wrath of the law.
    “What is essential here is ensuring that these violators are held accountable for these election offenses,” said the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), an election watchdog. “The continued failure to hold any person liable for vote-buying despite its widespread conduct has resulted in a lack of confidence in the electoral process in the country.”
    For now, at least 101 election winners with unresolved cases won’t be able to hit the ground running.     Their proclamation will remain suspended until the Comelec clears them of wrongdoing.
Can the public expect the same rigidity from the poll body in 2025, when the ones running for office are far more powerful and influential?
    “We will double the level of strictness, especially since we have national and local candidates,” Garcia said. “It is incumbent upon the Comelec to prove to them that we can do it not just in barangay and SK elections, but more particularly, in our regular, national and local elections.”
    The 2023 elections saw the return of the counting-sticks method to tally the votes, but there were three villages where the polls were automated.
    Barangays Zone II and Paliparan III in Dasmariñas, Cavite, as well as Barangay Pasong Tamo in Quezon City, used vote-counting machines on October 30, as part of the Comelec’s pilot test to automate future village elections.
    The project was in response to a ranking House lawmaker’s proposal to consider using the automated election system for the 2023 barangay polls, but due to logistics and budgetary constraints, the poll body limited the AES to three villages. -- Rappler