ANYONE CAN BE PRESIDENT
The late great comedian Dolphy had the most sensible response to the question, why he wasn’t considering running for president. Was it because he was afraid that he might lose?
“No,” Dolphy reportedly replied. “It’s because I’m afraid I might win and I won’t know what to do.”
Sadly, not everyone is as pragmatic as Dolphy. Rumors are rife that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte wants to succeed her father as president. And the other rumor is that Senator-boxer Manny Pacquiao plans to contest that and run for the highest office himself.
And why not? Qualifications for a job in a private firm are more stringent than those for president. Article VII, Section 2 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution merely requires the following: (a) Must be a naturalborn citizen of the Philippines; (b) must be a registered voter; (c) must be able to read and write; (d) must be a least 40 years old on the day of the election; and (e) must have been a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years.
Just to clarify: being born cesarean does not disqualify you. You are still considered naturalborn under the Constitution.
Of course, there are other requirements that the Constitution has prudently not listed such as having a private army, having billions in the bank, and having a battalion of online trolls.
There are other presumed qualifications such as honesty and integrity but Sara Duterte recently declared those irrelevant.
In a media interview, President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter defended her earlier assertion that all politicians lie (she was telling the truth). She insisted that there is no provision in the Constitution that prohibits liars from running for president.
Sara (and, perhaps, her father) may not have heard about “moral turpitude,” defined in Bouviers Law Dictionary as “everything which is done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty, or good morals.” The term, according to Google, was first introduced in 1901 in Act 190, otherwise known as the Code of Civil Actions and Special proceedings. It has been applied to cases involving the disqualification of members of the bar and those running for any elective position.
In other words, moral turpitude is the opposite of good manners and right conduct. The trouble is, in the Duterte administration, good manners and right conduct have been redefined. Thus, maybe Sara is right. In the current moral environment, liars can run for president or any elective office. So can thieves, plunderers, convicted felons and killers.
In any case, Pacquiao won’t be the only pugilist to want to throw his hat in the presidential ring. Oscar de la Joya, whom Pacquiao TKO’d some years ago, believes he can KO President Donald Trump in 2020 – assuming that Trump does not finally get the wall he deserves. Meaning a prison wall.
According to De la Joya, if Arnold Schwarzenegger could be elected governor of California and a reality TV show host like Trump could become president, why not an Olympic gold medalist like him?
In Ukraine, former heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko also seriously considered running for president but decided instead to support the candidacy of businessman Petro Poroshenko. Klitschko was a member of Parliament.
If Dolphy had decided to run for president, he would not have been the first comedian to do so. In the U.S., Gracie Allen, wife and comic foil of George Burns, ran as a nominee of the Surprise Party which had a kangaroo as mascot and the slogan, “It’s in the bag.” This was at the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential run.
Unlike then President Fidel Ramos who had Erap Estrada as his vice-president, Allen reportedly refused to have a vice-presidential running mate because she did not want to tolerate any vice in her administration.
In the 2012 U.S. election, TV comic Roseanne Barr actually filed her candidacy for president with the Federal Election Commission as candidate of the Green