Duterte declares May 14 special non-working day for barangay elections

President Rodrigo Duterte has called off classes and work in the entire country on  May 14 to allow voters to take part in the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said Duterte signed the proclamation on Wednesday declaring May 14 a special non-working day.

Up for grabs are the positions of barangay chairperson, seven members of the Sangguniang Barangay, SK chairperson and seven SK members in each of some 42,000 barangays nationwide.

The elections will be conducted manually.

The barangay and SK elections were originally scheduled in October 2016, but were postponed to October 2017. Congress then moved it to May this year.

Efforts to postpone the polls for the third time failed last month after the Senate did not pass a counterpart measure to complement the House of Representatives’ passage of the bill resetting the barangay polls to October 2018.

Duterte himself did not endorse the move to suspend the elections again even as he warned about local officials that would use drug money to influence the polls. —NB, GMA News