Peoples’ real feelings

PNoy and his cohorts especially in Congress are still fooling the people up to now. Obviously they do not believe in Lincoln’s sage advice to his fellow politicians that “you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Floating the idea of a term extension of his presidency is really so insulting to the intelligence even of the ordinary Filipino. More insulting here is the attempt to give the impression that Malacañang has absolutely nothing to do at all with this absurd suggestion even if it was Mar Roxas, PNoy’s closest ally and confidant, who propounded it first. Roxas will certainly not bring it up without PNoy’s go-signal.

Apparently PNoy and his die hard yellow brigade are still working under the impression that our countrymen particularly a big number of the electorate who had supposedly voted for him last 2010 can still be easily swayed, like what happened last 2010 when he was merely “compelled” by the peoples’ overwhelming clamor to seek the Presidency on the crest of the highly emotional outpouring of sympathy occasioned by the death of his mother.

The well scripted ploy subtly but clearly show that PNoy is just trying to find out if his emotional appeal to the public still works even after the DAP fiasco, and that he is not yet a political lame-duck. His propaganda strategists in Malacanang still believe that PNoy’s “bosses” are foolish enough to be duped by this scheme.

First, his communications secretary tried to show that PNoy has nothing to do with this move to extend his term by announcing that he will definitely step down in 2016. Then his assistant came out the next day with a contrary statement that PNoy can still change his mind like he did in the latter part of 2009 following the death of his mother when he decided to run for President in the 2010 elections despite his initial lack of interest for the position.

So this time, in a matter of one day, they want us to swallow, hook, line and sinker the notion that PNoy has abandoned his original position of stepping down by 2016 because nothing is really definite yet, and that “on matters of national interest, the president seeks to know the sentiments of his bosses – the Filipino people – to guide him in decision making.” His Communications Office Secretary himself has to make a turn around to convey this message. Expect therefore that the next announcement from Malacanang after a longer time perhaps will be that PNoy has decided to heed the sentiments of his “bosses” to extend his term.

It is really so revolting that PNoy and his rah-rah boys still believes that the Filipinos can still fall for this scripted gimmick. First of all, his term cannot just be extended because it is the sentiment of his “bosses.”  That may be the sentiment of his bosses but it is contrary to the provision of the constitution fixing the president’s term of office for six years only. His bosses cannot make a decision based on sentiments contrary to our Constitution. So the Constitution still has to be amended before he can stay longer in office.

Secondly the constitutional amendment cannot simply consist of extending his term of office. It should consist in allowing him or any other elected president after him, to run for re-election for another term of six years. So the only way for him to stay longer in office after 2016 is for him to run for re-election and win it after the constitution has been duly amended for this purpose. This idea of heeding the decision of his “bosses” is indeed absurd and ridiculous. There is absolutely no basis in likening his situation now with his situation in the 2010 elections. In 2010 he can really run for president. But this time he cannot anymore because of the “inflexible” constitutional provision fixing a single six-year term of office for a president.

The next question now is whether there is really a need to amend the constitution to enable PNoy to run for re-election and stay longer in office for another six years. To answer such question, it must be recalled first of all that originally our constitution fixed the president’s term of office to only four years with a right to re-election for another four years or a total of eight years. The framers of the present constitution however thought that such set up is detrimental to public interest. They saw that the president who gets elected spent most of his first four year term playing too much politics just to ensure that he gets elected again for another four years. Apparently, the first term of four years is mostly wasted by a president to ensure his longer stay in office for another four years.

So the framers thought that to do away with too much politics and to see to it that a president will devote most, if not all, of his time to do his job more efficiently and effectively, he should not be eligible for re-election anymore except that his term should be increased to six years. In this kind of set up, the framers thought that an elected president can accomplish much more for the welfare of the people. On paper the idea is really good.

But since the passage of the present constitution up to PNoy’s regime, much of the president’s time is still devoted to partisan politics rather than to promoting the common good. This is more evident under the present administration where the president has even increased the pork barrel which is the main source of patronage politics of elected officials both national and local.

As PNoy himself has shown therefore, amending the constitution to enable him to run again is not really for the peoples’ best interest. On the contrary it seems that six years is even too long for him to stay as president. He should have resigned earlier. This is the real sentiment of his bosses.

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