CONSTITUTIONAL INFIRMITY AND INFIRM PRESIDENTS

SECTION 12 of Article 7 of the 1987 Constitution cannot be any clearer: “In case of serious illness of the president, the public shall be informed of the state of his health.”

However, there is a caveat here, a gaping hole that our constitutional framers either did not foresee, or they had the foresight to craft it in such a way that it provides an ailing but devious president a way out to continue to deceive citizens. If the intent of the framers was to make the state of the health of the president an issue of public interest, then Section 12 is a poorly worded version of that mandate.

The section provides that the public should be informed of the state of a president’s health but only if the illness is serious; but there is no provision which obliges the president to report to the public the state of his/her health on a regular basis. A president is mandated to inform the public about the state of his/her health, but only in cases of serious illness. But there is no way the public can know that a particular illness of a president is serious because he/she is not obliged, in general, to report on the status of his/her health. In fact, the provision can even be interpreted to mean that the president does not have to inform the public about the state of his or her health if it is not serious.

A good faith reading of the provision, however, would demand an interpretation where the president will operate on the presumption that public office is a public trust. Section 1 of Article XI of the Constitution states that because it 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.”

Certainly, a president lying about the state of his or her health and thus failing to inform the people about any serious illness violates the Constitution and betrays the public trust. These are impeachable offenses. Lying about the state of a president’s health, if done by a public officer, does not only cast doubt on one’s integrity and loyalty, it also amounts to aiding and abetting the commission of an impeachable offense, and is in itself a violation of Section 12, Article VII of the Constitution.

While lying about a president’s serious illness may easily be swept under the rug should a seriously ill president recover, simply because obviously no one would know the lie, it becomes a different matter when such illness worsens that there is no other option but to inform the public. It is only then when the full force of Section 12 can weigh heavily on the liars and can be a ground for the Republic to hold accountable those who are responsible in propagating and enabling the lie, more so if they are public officers and employees.

But why would a seriously ill president lie about his or her health and why would his or her most loyal people propagate and enable such lie, even to the extent of deliberately coming up with false alibis, conjured up stories and photoshopped images?

The answer to this lies squarely in the 1987 Constitution. We have allowed ourselves to be subjected to this possibility when we ratified a Constitution where the vice president can come from another political party, or belong to the political opposition. We have structurally impaired the very concept of continuity when we opened the door to an incumbent president from one party getting disabled or even dying while in office and being replaced by his or her vice president who is the leader of the political opposition.

We can just scratch our collective heads and search for the wisdom in this provision. One reason is untenable because it pushes to its limits the principle of checks and balances, which is actually misplaced considering that such applies to the relationship between the three branches of government, or in a bicameral Congress, within the legislature, but not between a president and a vice president. The other, but more unpalatable, reason is the presumption that a vice president belonging to another party will just be like the members of Congress, who are all political butterflies ready to jump to the bandwagon of the president’s party.

We have simply allowed a constitutional infirmity to enable an infirm president to be secretive about any serious illness. The stability of the entire country is supposed to hinge on continuity and the Constitution should have protected such continuity even when a president is ill, dying, or dies, simply on the strength of the fact that his or her vice president is technically a part of his or her team. A change of teams is supposed to happen only after every election, considering that presidents are not allowed to run for another term. It is not supposed to happen when a president falls ill and dies.

A vice president who comes from the political opposition and who ascends to the presidency, in a situation of a highly partisan and polarized political landscape, is a sure formula for political

instability. He or she will most definitely replace the Cabinet and will face a Congress dominated by allies of the president he or she will replace. Coming from a highly charged and toxic partisan divide, political butterflies may just undermine the new president instead of flying to him or her. There is a high probability for political chaos with either the one who succeeds to the presidency or the allies of the former president, depending on their relationship with the military, resorting to extraconstitutional means such as mounting a coup.

Thus, if there is one provision in the Constitution that needs urgent revision, it should be that of having a separate vote for the president and the vice president. It is, frankly, a stupid and dangerous provision.