In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has officially designated October 30 as a special non-working day, in conjunction with the long-awaited Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections. The proclamation, labeled as Proclamation No. 359, was signed by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin on October 9 and disclosed to the public on October 11. President Marcos Jr. invoked his legal authority to declare October 30, 2023, a special non-working day nationwide.
The decision to make this declaration was based on the importance of allowing the citizens of the Philippines to actively participate in the upcoming elections and exercise their fundamental right to vote.
It is important to note that there is no existing law in the Philippines that automatically designates election days as public holidays. Therefore, it is customary for presidents to issue such proclamations for election days.
The Barangay elections, originally scheduled for May 2020, were postponed to December 2022 and subsequently rescheduled to October 2023. These repeated delays have garnered criticism from election monitoring organizations, which argue that they have deprived the electorate of their right to regularly select their local representatives.
While the Supreme Court declared the law signed by President Marcos, which rescheduled the December 2022 polls to October 2023, as unconstitutional in June, it also emphasized the necessity of holding the elections this year for legal and practical reasons.
Approximately 67.8 million eligible voters are expected to participate in the Barangay elections, while 23.2 million individuals are registered to take part in the Sangguniang Kabataan polls. A total of 1.41 million candidates have submitted their candidacies in the hopes of securing the 672,432 available positions.
