For perhaps most voters in the current generation, it is not easy to pinpoint when the barangay elections turned from a civic into a partisan exercise.
“The barangay elections shall be nonpartisan,” Philippine election laws state.
But in everyday terms, the law is frequently and grossly ignored.
In Cebu City alone, Mayor Tomas Osmeña and his predecessor Michael Rama were occupied with post-election arithmetics to determine the strength of their political parties.
Persons allied with the mayor’s Bando Osmeña – Pundok Kauswagan were elected chairs in 40 Cebu City barangays.
The loyalties of thirty-one elected barangay chairs lie with the former mayor’s Team Rama.
Osmeña himself appealed on his Facebook account for voters to elect enough barangay and youth council chairs for his camp to secure two seats in the city council — the ones reserved for the heads of the barangay and youth council associations.
We wonder if clear-headed lawyers have a voice in both parties. If they do, they obviously have no clout since the the mayor and Rama have been unrestrained in claiming candidates and pitting them against each other.
At best, parties enable leaders to observe certain principles in determining what redounds to the common good.
But in the barangay, the country’s smallest civic unit, only the common good should prevail in the spirit of community.
The vicissitudes of life to which barangay leaders respond, from peace and order to public health do not recognize parties.
Consequences of poor response or inaction to a plethora of concerns affect all residents regardless of their political persuasion.
Progress and prosperity wrought by good governance in the barangay ought to be partaken of by everyone.
Neighbors ought to be one through thick and thin, unperturbed by animosity or bad will that might arise from campaign periods and elections that in turn must be consigned to the dustbin of bygones since neighborhood endures, election or delayed election.
Taking barangay elections hostage to partisanship drive an unnecessary wedge between people of a shared fate.
It brings the poison of a divided city into our smallest social circles instead of bringing the basic oneness of each barangay and all barangays to bear on and heal the wasteful fractures in the city government.
The time has come for a barangay-based movement to pressure city leaders to serve their constituents — everyone in the barangays — rather than their narrow schemes to preserve loyalties and maintain a firm grip on power.
Such machinations have kept power not only latent but dismally impotent.
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