There is no constitutional right to candidacy

First word

Uare from

Kenya or South

Africa, you do not have to be in dread of people who believe they have a fundamental or inalienable human right to run

including the United States, do not approach candidacy in those terms.

As a part-time worker and parttime resident of Bonifacio Global City (BGC), I have been troubled by the prospect of having only a member of the Cayetano family to take care of my interests in the Philippine Congress and in the city government.

Partly because of this, and partly because of the epidemic of political family dynasties in the country, I have initiated, together with some associates, research on the subject of the citizen’s right

there is such a right, whether this also implies a right to establish a political dynasty, if you can persuade voters to buy the idea.

I consider the issue as quite urgent because national and local elections are just around the corner. In six months, the nation will be holding the midterm elections in May 2019 to elect a new Congress, and all local governments throughout the country.

of importuning a Cayetano every time I need a little bit of government or a little bit of representation in my life as a citizen.

No right of candidacy in PH Constitution

enough, is that the Philippine Constitution does not provide anywhere for a citizen’s right to

It is not mentioned in Article III, the article on the Bill of Rights, which contains 21 sections. It is also not mentioned in Article V, the article on suffrage, which I thought might discuss it alongside the citizen’s right to vote.

Elsewhere, the Charter talks The 1973 Constitution made suffrage an obligation under Article 4, Section 4.

The 1987 Constitution removed the provision and made suffrage simply a right, with the words, ‘Suffrage shall be exercised.”

To test the usefulness and expertise of our Philippine Commission on Human Rights (PHCR), I want to ask the commission: “Where does it say in the Constitution, or in our laws,

by age, can stand for election to

If we are correct in our assertion that there is such an omission in the Charter, then responsibility should be placed in the hands of the Cory Aquinoappointed drafters of the 1987 Constitution.

Why the omission, Monsod and Davide?

The omission is huge because the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as approved unanimously by 48 nations (the Philippines included) on Dec. 10, 1948, contains a provision on the rights of human Messrs.

Article 21:

1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

This implies a right to both election or appointment to pub-

No constitutional right to candidacy

Our next discovery was just as shocking. In America, the originator of constitutional government, there is a long history of denying the existence of a right

An online primer on the US Constitution cites a famous court decision, Powellv.McCormack: “Strictly speaking, there is no constitutionally guaranteed Constitution sets guidelines for presidential and congressional candidates concerning age, citizenship, and residency. It would be hard to make a case for the idea that the Constitution forbids

citizen, particularly inasmuch as the Tenth Amendment reserves all unenumerated rights for the states or the people.”

We were also fortunate to discover a paper written for Columbia University’s School of Law, titled “The Constitutional Right to Candidacy” by Nicole A. Gordon.

The paper consists of 17 pages. It was published in the Political ScienceQuarterly , Volume 91 Number 3.

Gordon wrote: “While the right to vote is now recognized as a fundamental constitutional right, it remains unclear whether the correlative right, to candidacy, enjoys the same status.

“Just as restrictions on the franchise have also been struck down, especially in recent years, these restrictions fall into two categories: those involving a candidate’s personal qualifications, such as requirements of property ownership, durational residence, age, and the like, and those indirectly restraining candidates because they regulate the electoral process, such as filing fees and petition requirements.”

Gordon reports further: “The courts have only recently become receptive to challenges to restrictions in the latter group; they have differed in their approaches when resolving the issues presented by any kind of restriction on candidacy.

“The Supreme Court has never explicitly recognized candidacy as a fundamental right, independent of the right to vote. Nevertheless, lower courts are divided and have relied on dicta in Supreme Court decisions to sup- for and against recognition of a candidacy right as fundamental.

The Supreme Court’s failure to deal definitively with the acceptability of standards and

- didate’s rights has left the lower courts with little direction and

with those of candidates, without decisive language making explicit the scope and implications of the court’s ruling. The ensuing confusion among the courts has manifested itself not only in

- dards apply, but also in the contradictory results reached even among courts agreeing on the applicable standards themselves.

The Burger Court has consistently resisted expansion of the existing class of fundamental rights.”

Kenya and South Africa

- cratic countries have been more purposive in spelling out political rights. One country that is instructive is South Africa, which came late to its democracy because of apartheid.

Another one is Kenya, which combined a right to candidacy with the requirement of integrity

The South African Bill of Rights states that “every citizen has the right to free, fair and regular elections” for national, provincial and local government. Its Bill of Rights also mentions the right to vote, to form or join a political party, and to run for election.

This is indubitably another compelling argument for taking a long, hard look at the 1987 Constitution. We must ask our Charter framers why they took away or made no provision for the citizen’s right to run for