"Let another administration take over the task of running this country well."
It is very probably true that most Filipinos consider the idea of President Rodrigo Duterte running for the position of vice-president in next year’s election unacceptable. There are several reasons for this. The idea of a president of the Republic stepping down and then proceeding to run for the nation’s second-highest position sets a bad precedent. It is an act lacking in dignity. Most important of all, a Rodrigo Duterte candidacy for the vice presidency has all the markings of a naked bid to circumvent the spirit of the Constitutional provision limiting a president to one term of six years.
Another reason for most Filipinos’ difficulty in accepting the idea of a Rodrigo Duterte candidacy for the vice presidency is the reason offered by Mr. Duterte and his supporters as justification for his quest for the nation’s second-highest position. “The President wants continuity in policymaking,” one supporter recently stated. “President Duterte wants to be assured that his administration’s policies will be continued,” he added.
The supporter’s statements suggest that a President should not step down after a single Constitutionally mandated term but should be allowed, in the interest of “continuity,” to stay on and continue the program and policies that he started during his term. Pursuing that logic, in the name of “continuity,” to stay in Malacanang for a total of 12 or 18 or even 24 years.
This idea provokes a return to this country’s leadership structure prior to the 1973 Constitution. Under the preceding Constitution—i.e., the 1935 Constitution—the President of the Philippines was limited to a maximum of two 4-year terms. The principal objection to that arrangement was that the President tended to spend the first of the two terms preparing for his second election campaign, to the detriment of good national governance. The remedy for that, in the view of most of the delegates to the 1970-1972 Constitutional Convention was to scrap the two 4-year terms and replace it with a single, but longer, term. The single term would have a 6-year duration.
The delegates to the 1970-1972 Constitutional Convention arrived at the consensus that six years was a sufficiently long time and that a President should be able to complete his program of government over a six-year period. What they should have added, but didn’t, was that a President could not be a good Chief Executive if at the end of six years he had not made a difference to the nation and his program of government was still uncompleted.
By almost any measure, Rodrigo Duterte’s program of government has been a failure. Economic growth, social development, infrastructure, judicial stability, corruption, illegal drugs, poverty reduction—the former mayor of Davao City has not delivered on his 2016 campaign promises. So what need is there for “continuity”? What is there to continue? To the first question the answer is, none; to the second question the answer is, nothing.
Enough talk about “continuity” for the Duterte administration’s program of government. Time’s up. Let another administration take over the task of running this country well.