House bill: Senators seeking lower posts deemed resigned

Elected officials seeking higher government posts, or those running for public office other than the one they are holding, should be considered resigned, a lawmaker from the reform bloc of the House of Representatives has proposed.

House Bill 972 or the Election Mandate Act of Manila Rep. Amado Bagatsing is aimed at “preventing candidates from trifling with the mandate of the people,” in light of several officials, particularly senators, who ran for other posts and lost but managed to get their Senate seats back.

Under present laws, which the senators themselves crafted, any member of the 24-man chamber can run for lower office and still return to the legislature if ever he loses in the local elections.

This was the case of incumbent Sen. Lito Lapid, who ran but lost in the Makati mayoralty race last May 14, and opposition Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who lost to President Arroyo in the May 2004 presidential derby.

Both retained their seats in the Senate.

It was a different case, however, insofar as former senator Alfredo Lim, who returned as city mayor of Manila, and former senator Noli de Castro, who won as vice president when he was the running mate of Mrs. Arroyo in 2004.

Section 2 of Bagatsing’s bill provides that “any national and local elective official, except President and Vice President, running for any office other than the one which he is holding in a permanent capacity, shall be ipso facto (automatically) resigned from his office upon the filing of his certificate of candidacy.”

The veteran lawmaker, who is opposed to the leadership of Speaker Jose de Venecia, cited Article XI Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution which provides that a “public office is a public trust.”

“Public officers and employees must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives,” Bagatsing said.

However, according to Bagatsing, “lessons were learned from the past where some elective officials ran for local positions but did not assume the office, and for this reason, we may say that these officials were just trifling with the mandate of the people. In effect they make a mockery of the electoral process by aspiring for higher or even lower positions,” he added.

“In fact midterm elections are the ones benefited by Section 67 of the Omnibus Election Code and further greatly benefited when repealed completely by Section 14 of Republic Act 9007 or the Fair Elections Act,” the lawmaker pointed out.

In a statement, Bagatsing explained that “the first limits the benefit to a higher position which is the President and Vice President respectively, while the latter were opened to all positions.”

Bagatsing said this was class legislation.

“The benefits as stated cannot be applied to any other elective positions since their mandate is only three years, unlike the senators for that matter, which is for six years. Neither can it be applied to the position of President and Vice President, since it was the very Constitution that provides for the mode of termination of office,” he argued.

Bagatsing stressed that “with this bill at hand, all elective officials will now honor the mandate they got from the people. This is in consonance with the constitutional edict that all public officials must serve the people with utmost loyalty and not trifle with the mandate which they have received from their constituents.”