E-08557 Concurring and Dissenting Opinion: Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen — Official PDF

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion 15 “GR. No. E-08557~ The costs fall hardest on the:young. Membership in the Katipunan ng Kabataan, which elects. the chairperson and members of Sangguniang=~-~ Kabataan, is limited to those at least 15 and not more than 30 years of age.** The youth who could have voted in November 2026 but will be past 30 by November 2028 will not merely have their votes postponed; their opportunity to vote is lost. The same is true of those who would have been qualified to run for the Sangguniang Kabataan in 2026 and will have exceeded the». statutory age limit to run in 2028. The Constitution has already anticipated the risk involved: ' Those who hold power will confer advantages on others in officé whose support they may need. That risk is the reason the Constitution defers salary increases to successors. A rule that applies a lengthened term only to officials elected after the law takes effect removes the risk without denying Congress any power the Constitution gives it. Congress loses nothing under this reading. It may fix the barangay term at five years. It may begin the new term with the next election. It may, within the limits this Court set in Macalintal v. Commission on Elections, move an election for reasons the Constitution recognizes. What it may not do is decide, in place of the people, who will govern them for a period the people never granted. An election is the occasion on which. the people act..without an | intermediary. Every branch of government, this Court included, exercises authority that has emanated from.them. That is why an election must mean what the voters understood it. to mean on the day they voted. The people of our barangays will vote again. When they do, they are entitled to know the length of the term they are conferring, and the officials they elect are entitled to hold office by that choice, for that time, and no longer. This Court should have held Congress to that. The constitutional authority to set terms of office cannot be construed so broadly as to allow repeated extensions of incumbents’. tenure without meaningful regard for the people’s right to genuine, periodic elections... 52 See Republic Act No. 10742 (2016), sec. 4, in relation to sec. 7, which in turn provides that “[t]he T ' Sangguniang Kabataan chairperson shail, with the concurrence of the majority of the Sangguniang Kabataan members, appoint from among the members of the Katipunan ng Kabataan, a secretary and a treasurer.” 53 See Republic Act No. 10742 (2016), sec. 10, which requires elective Sangguniang Kabataan officials to be at least 18 but not more than 24 years of age on the day of the elections.