Duterte can’t occupy president's office through succession –1Sambayan convenor

President Rodrigo Duterte cannot occupy the presidential office through succession, a lawyer and convener of opposition coalition 1Sambayan said Monday, amid talk of his possible vice presidential run in the 2022 elections.

Duterte, who is constitutionally barred from running for another presidential term, has been urged by his party mates in the ruling PDP-Laban to seek the country’s second-highest post, supposedly to ensure continuity of his programs and policies.

Weighing in on the issue, 1Sambayan convenor and lawyer Howard Calleja said a win for Duterte in the vice presidential race could be seen as a “backdoor to the presidency.”

“He cannot succeed [to the Office of the President] because if that happens it would be a perpetuation of a dynasty [and] a dictatorial or an authoritarian regime,” he said in a webinar.

“We have to admit to the clear intent of the Constitution that any president, any person who has served as president shall only be allowed to serve one term for a maximum of six years.”

Calleja added: “There is no way in the Constitution that allows any president or any person to serve more than six years as president.”

Lawyer Michael Henry Yusingco of the Ateneo School of Government said the 1987 Constitution does not allow two consecutive terms for a president.

“Allowing an incumbent president to run for VP is essentially risking the country to return to where we were before Martial Law. Allowing an incumbent president to run for VP is gambling with everything that we have gained as a democracy under the 1987 Constitution,” he said.

Both Malacañang and Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra earlier said there is no prohibition for an incumbent president to run for a lower elective position. Former Presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo served as mayor and congresswoman, respectively, after leaving office.

Guevarra said a president shall not be eligible for any reelection, meaning “election to exactly the same office.”

“If the framers of the Constitution intended to make the sitting president ineligible to assume the presidency again by succession after his six-year term has expired, it would have been quite easy for them to expressly say so in the Constitution,” he said.

Duterte reiterated last week his openness to run for vice president. He however said that he “would be reduced to inutility” if the next president is not his friend. — DVM, GMA News