Opposition coalition 1Sambayan asserted that President Duterte’s purported plan to run for vice president is different from former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo holding the speakership in the House of Representatives or deposed former President Joseph Estrada’s presidential bid in 2010 and victory as Manila mayor.
The House Speaker is fourth in the line of succession, 1Sambayan convenor Howard Calleja said, and in case there is a need to assume the presidency by the House Speaker, he/she will only act as an interim president until the call for an election.
“So, they would not serve as President and serve the term,” Calleja, a lawyer, stressed in a recent interview with ABS-CBN’s “After The Fact.”
But in the line of succession to the presidency, the vice president—similar to what happened when Estrada was removed from office and Macapagal-Arroyo took the helm—will “assume the role of the president and finish the term of the unspent term of the president.”
“If it is the Senate president, Speaker, or the Chief Justice, depends on the line of succession as the case maybe, they are not there to assume the unexpired term. They are there only in an interim basis not as president, but in interim basis to call for an election,” he explained.
Allowing a former president to run as vice president will give the former “an opportunity not by reelection but by succession to go around the constitutional prohibition.”
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“What has been prohibited directly can’t be done indirectly,” Calleja said.
The 1Sambayan convenor also questioned PDP-Laban’s decision to allow Duterte to pick his presidential candidate if he decides to run as vice president.
“Obviously, the presidential candidate is now a puppet of the vice president,” Calleja pointed out.
Duterte hasn’t announced his bid for the vice presidency, but his party has been pushing for a Duterte-Duterte tandem. Presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio had said she has no intentions of running for president, but several political figures were seen visiting her in Davao City.
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Aside from her father, former Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro’s name is being floated as her vice president. Former Senator Bongbong Marcos and his sister, Senator Imee Marcos, were also seen visiting the presidential daughter during her birthday. Rumors of a Marcos-Duterte tandem for 2022 also made the rounds on social media.
1Sambayan has not endorsed a name for the opposition’s standard-bearer, although Vice President Leni Robredo, former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, Senator Grace Poe, and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno are being considered.