'GMA can reassume presidency if elected House member'
ANGELES CITY, Philippines – President Arroyo can reassume the presidency after she is elected a member of the House of Representatives through a 1947 law on presidential succession, according to a lawyer.
Lawyer Ernesto Franciso said under Republic Act No. 181, when neither the president-elect nor the vice president-elect shall have qualified, and the Senate president and the speaker have not yet been elected, Congress shall elect an acting president from among the senators and members of the House.
That acting president shall remain in office until the president-elect or the vice president-elect shall have been qualified, he added.
Francisco said Mrs. Arroyo’s allies in Congress can elect her as acting president after she wins a seat in the House when the people fail to elect a president or vice president because of some events like the breakdown of poll automation, vacancy in the post of Senate president and the speaker on June 30 next year.
“RA 181 was not expressly repealed by the 1973 Constitution, and its provisions are not inconsistent with the provisions of the 1987 Constitution on presidential succession,” he said.
Francisco said that since the Constitution provides that Congress can choose who can act as president in case of permanent incapacity of the president until a new president is elected, any doubt on the validity of RA 181 may be remedied through a new law with exactly the same provisions.
Mrs. Arroyo’s election as acting president would be easy because under RA 181, the election shall be done by Congress in joint session, not necessarily with the Senate and the House of Representatives voting separately, he added.
Francisco said Mrs. Arroyo could remain president while the president-elect and the vice president-elect have not qualified.
“Also, it must be considered that any legal question on the matter of presidential succession that may arise on June 30, 2010 will be resolved by a Supreme Court filled with GMA appointees,” he said.
‘GMA can do an Adams’
Mrs. Arroyo can do what US President John Quincy Adams had done in the 19th century when he ran for Congress and won after completing his term as president, a lawmaker said yesterday.
Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said the sixth US president was elected representative from Massachusetts after leaving the White House.
Adams served as a member of Congress for the last 17 years of his life, he added.
Gullas said Andrew Johnson, the 17th US president, was elected senator six years after his presidency.
“If Mrs. Arroyo does not wish to retire from active public service, that is her prerogative,” he said.
Gullas said suggestions that as a lawmaker Mrs. Arroyo could work on Charter change to shift to a parliamentary system of government so she could become prime minister are “overly speculative.”
“Once the people elect a new president next year, there will be a totally new order,” he said.
“Everyone will revolve around the new president. Mrs. Arroyo will just be one of 282 members of the House. Her vote will be as good as mine.”
Mrs. Arroyo has filed her certificate of candidacy for representative of Pampanga’s second district.
She joined three other Arroyos aspiring for congressional seats: her younger son Diosdado of Camarines Sur’s second district, brother-in-law Jose Ignacio of Negros Occidental’s fifth district, and sister-in-law Ma. Lourdes of the party-list group Ang Kasangga. – Ding Cervantes, Jess Diaz
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