Quezon City Rep. Precious Hipolito-Castelo, a House assistant majority leader, on Sunday said she is withdrawing her bill she filed in 2019 that shall authorize President Rodrigo Duterte to name from his Cabinet a temporary successor in case his four constitutional successors could not assume the presidency.
In a letter to House Secretary General Jose Luis Montales, Hipolito-Castelo said “I write to respectfully request for the withdrawal and permanent archiving of House Bill No. 4062, which was filed on Aug. 20, 2019. Please take note that the said bill has not been acted upon by the Committee on Constitutional Amendments since the date of its filing.”
The bill modeled after the United States of America is “An Act giving the President the Power to Delegate or Designate a Successor in the Unlikely Event that the President, Vice President, Senate president and Speaker of the House of Representatives Die or Become Incapacitated to Fill in the Role of the President.”
According to Hipolito-Castelo, she pulled out her proposal in a bid to erase any wrong impression about any move to ignore or disregard the constitutional line of succession to the presidency.
