"The members of the House of Representatives should have been left to resolve the chamber leadership issue independently, by themselves."
"The members of the House of Representatives should have been left to resolve the chamber leadership issue independently, by themselves."The Philippines has had the presidential form of government since its independence from Spain except for two periods—one during the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo (1898-2001) and the other during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986), when this country functioned under the parliamentary form of government. But the manner in which the recent contest for the position of Speaker in the 18th Congress was resolved has made many knowledgeable observers wonder whether the 18th Congress is a de facto parliament rather than a presidential-type legislature.
The 18th Congress Speakership succession issue opened up with the retirement from Congress of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Mrs. Arroyo served as Speaker for one year, succeeding Pantaleon Alvarez, who was deposed on the very day of President Rodrigo Duterte’s delivery of his third State of the Nation Address (SONA). Four Representatives quickly made known their intentions to seek the House of Representatives’ top post. They were the Representatives of Taguig (Alan Peter Cayetano), Marinduque (Lord Allan Velasco), Leyte (Martin Romualdez) and Pampanga (Amelio Gonzales). Mr. Cayetano, who was Rodrigo Duterte’s running mate in the 2016 election, claimed that he and Mr. Velasco had entered into an agreement to share the Speaker’s term of office.
A fifth candidate for the Speakership emerged in due course. The Hugpong ng Pagbabago ng Pilipinas (HPP), the party founded by Presidential daughter Sara Duterte for the 2019 election, announced that it was fielding Isidro Ungab, one of Davao City’s Representatives, in the Speakership contest. Subsequently, Presidential son Paolo announced, with something less than seriousness, that he too would contest the Speakership because of his dissatisfaction with the purported Cayetano-Velasco sharing arrangement.
In more normal circumstances the selection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is a lively and highly contentious affair, with two—or, at times, three—members standing out as likely future occupants of the fourth highest office in the land, backed by groups made up of fellow-Representatives known to be supportive of their leadership ambitions. In the end the choice of the Speaker usually became a toss-up between the two leading contenders, who had assiduously courted the support of their peers.
But 2019 presented the Filipino people with a different kind of spectacle. On this occasion there were no less than five credible contenders for the position of Speaker—of whom two were allegedly parties to a sharing arrangement—looking for success not to the support of the majority of the Lower House membership but to a signal from Malacanang for the success of their respective quests.
Eventually the signal came. Mr. Duterte had long maintained an I-don’t-want-to-get involved position, saying that the Speakership tussle was something for the House membership to resolve, but in the end he did decide to intervene, saying that there was a need to settle a contest that had become highly divisive and distractive. The Chief Executive came down on the side of the Cayetano-Velasco arrangement. With Mr. Duterte’s blessing, Alan Peter Cayetano would serve as Speaker for the first 24 months of the Speakership’s 36-month term.
In the end members of the Lower House of Congress were not able to exercise their Constitutional right to pick one of their own as head of their chamber. That right was exercised—with their acquiescence, to be sure—by someone outside the legislative branch of government, namely the head of the Executive Department. In the parliamentary system of government there is no need to speak of “outside the legislative branch” because the legislative and the Executive Department are fused in a single body, to wit, parliament.
The members of the House of Representatives should have been left to resolve the chamber leadership issue independently, by themselves. That’s how the presidential system of government operates. But they didn’t, and the issue was resolved with the participation of someone from the other political department of the government. The selection of Speaker Cayetano/Velasco was decision-making of the parliamentary kind.
The advocates of Constitutional revision really need to move for a shift to the parliamentary form of government. Congressional subservience to the Chief Executive will accomplish that.