Vice President Sara Duterte’s recent soundbite that she appointed herself as the ‘designated survivor’ has kept the political conversation going with past and present senators weighing heavily on the importance of having a clearly defined law of succession in worst-case scenarios.
On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III issued a statement hoping that his proposed Senate Bill No. 921 on the Rule of Succession, if the worst thing happened to our top elected officials, would soon be approved before the 19th Congress ends next year.
Pimentel underscored the importance of his proposal to ensure a clear line of succession to avoid a leadership crisis in the event a disaster renders all top government officials incapacitated.
Under the current Philippine political setup, the Top 5 government officials are the following: President, Vice President, Senate President, House Speaker, Supreme Court Chief Justice. There is no clear line of succession beyond them, which is what Pimentel is trying to address.
“There needs to be a law. That’s why I have a proposed law to address that scenario,” explained Pimentel.
Former Senator Panfilo Lacson attempted to do just that during his tenure in 2019. He is hoping his Senate Bill No. 982, or the Act Prescribing the Order of Presidential Succession—referred to in the media as the ‘Designated Survivor’ Bill—can be refiled and passed by the current Congress.
“Without passing judgment on the ability of our country’s security forces to do their job well – God forbid, if the 2007 bombing of Batasang Pambansa that killed Basilan Cong. Wahab Akbar and a staffer of Gabriela party-list Rep Luzviminda Ilagan would happen again with the direst of consequences, without an enabling law to comply with Sections 7 and 8, Art VII of the 1987 Constitution, we will have a leadership vacuum,” he said.
Lacson warned that this will result in a constitutional crisis.
Meanwhile, Pimentel rebuked the Vice President for her apparent “bad and inappropriate joke” just to express that she would not be attending the third State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Marcos.
Pimentel aired his disapproval of Duterte’s remarks about appointing herself as the “designated survivor.”
“She (Duterte) should not have said it in the context of SONA. She should not have used it as a joke. It’s not a good joke,” said Pimentel. He, however, is confident that the joke won’t impact the attendees of the SONA.
Pimentel said the concept of a “designated survivor” is more commonly associated with the US’ State of the Union address, where a designated official is kept at a secure location in case of a catastrophic event.
The term was popularized by the eponymous American political thriller created by David Guggenheim, which aired on ABC and Netflix between 2016 to 2019. The story followed a low-level US Cabinet official, who became President of the United States after a catastrophic bombing during a State of the Union address killed everyone ahead of him in the line of succession.
In the Philippines, Pimentel said, the Constitution appoints the Vice President as the designated successor. “They (politicians) are mixing it with showbiz because there’s a famous TV series called Designated Survivor,” Pimentel noted.
Lacson, for his part, took Duterte’s remarks as “a rhetorical statement, but a good soundbite nevertheless.”
“She (Duterte) is the constitutional successor to the President not needing an appointment as the designated survivor, which by the way is still a pending legislative measure in Congress,” Lacson said in a post on his official X (formerly Twitter) account last Thursday, July 11.
