File SOCE or risk removal from post

WINNERS in the recently concluded Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) will be removed from office and perpetually disqualified from running in future elections and barred from holding any appointive position in the government if they twice fail to file their statement of contributions and expenditures (SOCE), the Commission on Elections (Comelec) warned on Wednesday.

Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said that even if the subject barangay or SK chairman has already assumed office, he or she would be removed and would be succeeded by the top barangay council member or SK council member.

Further, Garcia emphasized that the November 29 deadline for the filing of SOCE is non-extendible, saying that «under the law, all candidates must submit their SOCE within 30 days from election day.»

As of November 28, nearly 500,000 of the more than 1.4 million candidates in the BSKE have filed their SOCE, he said.

«There are still one million candidates who have not filed their SOCE,» Garcia pointed out.

«In the last [2022] elections, we collected P80 million in administrative fines from candidates who failed to file their SOCE,» he said.

The legal basis for requiring candidates and political parties to submit «full, true and itemized» SOCEs is Section 14 of Republic Act 7166 or the «Synchronized National and Local Elections Law.» It provides that all candidates and treasurers of political parties are required to file their SOCEs.

Winning candidates who overspent during the campaign period may also be removed from office even if they have already assumed office.

Based on Comelec records, 672,016 elective posts were contested. There were 1,414,487 aspirants in the BSKE. Of the number, 96,962 for barangay captains, 731,682 for members of the Sangguniang Barangay, 92,774 aspirants for Sangguniang Kabataan, and 493,069 for the Sangguniang Kabataan council.