(POLITIKO) Former San Juan mayor now Senator Jinggoy Estrada has decried the alleged proliferation of flying voters in San Juan for next year’s elections.
During the Senate plenary deliberations on the budget on Monday (Nov. 18), Estrada said registered San Juan city voters sharply increased to 109,640, or an increase of 32.13 percent in 2022 from 71,225 voters in 2016.
Estrada also expressed alarm at the increase in registered San Juan voters for the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections, which jumped to 106,823, or up 42.46 percent in 2023 from 75,037 SK voters in 2018.
Estrada said the case of San Juan is alarming if compared to the marginal increase in voters in other cities for the national and local elections – 3.75 percent increase in Pasig, 1.33 percent in Mandaluyong, 5.55 percent in Quezon City, and 6.37 percent in Manila.
Meanwhile, voters in the barangay and SK elections increased by 9.95 percent in Pasig City, 5.5 percent in Mandaluyong, 14.91 percent in Quezon City and 15.86 percent in Manila City.
“San Juan is the second to the smallest city in Metro Manila. For me, the increase of registered voters in the 2022 national and local elections and the barangay SK elections in 2023 is highly irregular as compared to nearby cities. What can we do about this?” Estrada asked the budget sponsor of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Budget sponsor Senator Imee Marcos said the poll body could only delist the registered voters with a petition for exclusion against the newly transferred and newly registered voters.
She said Comelec had urged the Department of the Interior and Local Government to file cases against barangay captains who indiscriminately issue barangay residency certificates for flying voters.