By Reisha Mae F. Valdez, UC student
This week, I found myself doing something painfully ordinary at a grocery counter. I looked at the total, looked at the money in my hand, and started deciding what I could put back.
It was only a few items. Nothing extravagant. Still, the amount seemed to disappear faster than expected. It made me think about how different money feels depending on whose hands hold it. For one person, P1,000 is something to carefully stretch. For a government, billions can appear as figures in a document.
Now imagine P8 billion.
The Commission on Elections has already spent around P8 billion for preparations for the 2026 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections. Ballots have been prepared. Election materials have been produced. Personnel have been engaged. Then came the possibility of postponing the November 2 polls once again.
A Senate measure sponsored by Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero seeks to move the elections to 2028 and set the term of barangay and SK officials at five years. Supporters argue that longer terms could give local officials enough time to plan and finish their programs.
Perhaps.
But what happens to everything that has already been paid for?
Some election materials may be kept for future use. Other expenses may have to be incurred again. Personnel will still need to be paid. Preparations will begin again when the next election finally comes.
One postponement can create another expense. That expense requires another allocation. Another allocation comes from a budget that could have been used elsewhere.
That is the chain reaction.
And perhaps this is where the issue becomes personal.
For an ordinary Filipino, P1,000 has a face. It can be the groceries brought home after work. It can be a student’s allowance for several days. It can be medicine bought for a parent. It can be the amount left in a wallet after transportation and food have already taken their share.
Eight billion pesos has no face.
But it should.
Behind that number are classrooms waiting for repairs, health centers needing medicine, communities needing safer evacuation facilities, and families hoping that the next disaster will find them better prepared.
This is not to say that every peso spent on an election is wasted. Elections cost money. Democracy has a price, and citizens should be willing to pay for the right to choose their leaders.
But democracy also demands responsibility from those entrusted with public funds.
The people who provide that money cannot simply postpone their own expenses when they run short. A parent cannot tell the grocery cashier, “We will pay for this two years from now.” A student cannot tell a driver that transportation money will come after another budget cycle.
So why should public money be treated as though there will always be more?
Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not whether the elections should be postponed.
It is whether we have become too accustomed to the consequences of postponement.
Because P8 billion can be written in one line. It can be debated in a room. It can be defended with figures and policy arguments.
But outside those rooms, the same amount could have been divided into thousands of things people actually feel.
And when we eventually ask where the money went, the answer may be found not only in what was spent, but in everything that could have been done with it.
And maybe that is where the chain reaction truly begins: not with the billions that disappear, but with the small things ordinary people can no longer afford to keep.**
