Comelec eyes P1.3-B additional budget for Bangsamoro polls
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) may need an additional budget of P1.3 billion to conduct the Bangsamoro Parliamentary elections after the postponement of the polls that was set for Oct. 13 this year.
The poll body would need to restart most of its preparations as a result of the postponement, said Comelec Chair George Garcia on Tuesday.
Unconstitutional
“I want to make it clear that in our country, every resetting, no matter what kind of elections, there is always an additional cost. When you reset, you set aside something, and therefore you need to ask for more budget for this. So, we might need an additional P1.3 billion for our budget,” Garcia said in an ambush interview on Tuesday.
He said the Comelec would be writing to Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, the Senate committee on finance chair, regarding the need for more funding, noting that the agency has already finished its budget hearings with the House plenary.
The Comelec chief said the agency hoped to “chase after” the additional budget, given how P1.2 billion of its funding was lost due to the postponement of the Bangsamoro elections.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declared that the two regional laws creating parliamentary districts in Bangsamoro were unconstitutional, instructing the Bangsamoro Transition Authority to craft a new districting law by Oct. 30.
Payments still to be made
The decision postponed the parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which would have been its first since the BARMM was created in 2019, from Oct. 13 this year to not later than March 31, 2026.
Prior to the Supreme Court decision, the Comelec had already begun preparations for the Bangsamoro elections, which included the printing of ballots, deployment of election materials, as well as the leasing of automated vote-counting machines.
Garcia said the poll body would need to, among others, print new ballots given how the ones printed earlier were still based on a districting law invalidated by the high court.
“P500 million was [spent] for the printing of ballots,” he noted. “Remember, we deployed materials already. We based it on [Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 58] that was also declared by the high court as unconstitutional.”
“We had already deployed election paraphernalia, machines, ballot boxes, transmission devices. We already made contracts for everything on this list, and therefore, we need to pay for that even though [the elections] did not push through,” Garcia added.
