Arroyo to Congress: Some Considerations

The Filipinos have already heard the pronouncement by the officials of the Commission on Elections that there is no legal impediment against the purported plan of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to run for congressional seat in May, 2010.  According to the Commission, the Constitution is categorical that the sitting President cannot seek re-election for presidency.  But, the positions of vice-presidency and that in the Congress are all theoretically open to, in Arroyo’s case, her.

Be that as it may, we however know that moral or ethical ascendancy is just as important as legal observance is to any public leader.  And, as now that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has announced her decision to run for Congress, we might as well bring to the fore some ethical considerations to color our perspective as we look at this current political development in the Philippines.

First, with a sitting president campaigning for a congressional seat, there is in effect a very probable possibility that government bureaucracy and machinery will be made to serve her political end.  No one would then dare to challenge her.  For contending against her is like contending against the entire machinery of the Philippine government.

But, has she not vowed already now that she would still be in-charge of the Philippines as she does not plan to devote much time campaigning?  For one, she has already campaigned as she made her more or less fifty (50) visits to the second district of Pampanga on which account she aroused the curiousity of political pundits that she was up for something after her stint in Malacanan.  And, the pundits proved to be right and their words prophetic! 

Further, Filipinos knew about “Hello, Garci”.  She was a sitting president then, when the 2004 presidential elections took place.  She bastardized the very agency that is constitutionally mandated to supervise the proceedings of elections in the Philippines.  And, she won the presidency with the same margin that she asked her Garcillano to ensure her to have over her very popular opponent.

Second, with her decision to run, she is a personification of anything that has gone to the dogs.  Sure, the Constitution is categorical in saying that presidents cannot be re-elected as presidents.  But, the spirit of the Constitution, as constitutionalists are saying, is to say that one has to have a retreat from (partisan) political life after a stint with the highest political office in the land.  This is just to ensure that the presidency is given the dignity that it has and is afforded the respect that it commands.  The constitutionalists were, I bet, decent people, who must have considered that specifying the prohibitions of re-election for any president to run for any position is already an indication that our country has gone down to the gutter level insofar as politics is concerned.  They must not have anticipated that there will be a Gloria-Macapagal-Arroyo whose hubris would test not just the limits of the Constitution but also the threshold of the patience of Filipino people.