[PODCAST] Law of Duterte Land: Can Duterte run for VP?

If he wants to, President Rodrigo Duterte can run for vice president in 2022, says constitutional expert and former Supreme Court justice Vicente V. Mendoza.

“The Constitution allows that possibility of a president running for a lower position like the vice president, because what it prohibits is the reelection to the same office,” says Mendoza in this podcast episode.

If what critics speculate turn out to be true, that it’s a ploy for a president to resign so Duterte can succeed as president again, he can do that too, says Mendoza.

“If [Duterte] succeeds as president because the [new] president somehow ceases from office, he cannot be elected again [after that],” said Mendoza.

The Constitution says a vice president who succeeded as president and served not more than four years of the unexpired term, can run for president. That’s how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was able to serve a total of nine years as president – three years of Joseph Estrada’s unexpired term plus six years of a full term as an elected president.

Duterte serving as president by succession is a scenario that, for some, is a circumvention of the Constitution.

For Mendoza, the Constitution’s intent is to preserve the ideal that a good president can return to power, comparing it to the Roman Cincinnatus.

“Not all persons are bad. You are assuming that once a president is there, you don’t want him to become president again. That is not the constitutional intention,” said Mendoza.

For more of this discussion, listen to this episode.

For past podcast episodes:

• Episode 1 Part 1: Supreme Court’s most controversial decisions
• Episode 1 Part 2: Department of Justice’s evolving definition of warrantless arrests
• Episode 2: The rule of law in the time of the coronavirus
• Episode 3: Pandemic and the great wall of free speech
• Episode 4: Will petition to disclose Duterte health work?
• Episode 5: Legal difficulties of a prisoner mass release
• Episode 6: Breaking down the ABS-CBN franchise legal and political issues
• Episode 7: ABS-CBN and the 3 tangled branches of government
• Episode 8: Are extraordinary writs still effective in the time of Duterte?
• Episode 9: Dissecting anti-terror bill and threats to freedoms
• Episode 10: The problems with the Cybercrime Law
• Episode 11: Can we trust the gov’t panel probing drug war deaths?
• Episode 12: Why press freedom is legally protected
• Episode 13: What is People’s Initiative and will it work for ABS-CBN?
• Episode 14: The new push for death penalty
• Episode 15: A State of terror
• Episode 16: GCTA’s thorn – Do bad men deserve good things?
• Episode 17: Policies beyond body count of Duterte’s drug war
• Episode 18: Can we really bring Xi Jinping to the ICC?
• Episode 19: Philippine courts and the death of baby River
• Episode 20: Deep dive into anti-terror law IRR
• Episode 21: Supreme Court and the SALN challenge
• Episode 22: Where PH stands in fight for climate justice
• Episode 23: How to legally fight red-tagging
• Episode 24: Hope for the Rule of Law with Dino de Leon
• Episode 25: Summary of anti-terror law petitions
• Episode 26: May it please the Court – the anti-terror law orals
• Episode 27: Investigating Duterte’s drug war using hard data
• Episode 28: Your Honors, they are killing lawyers
• Episode 29: Choosing who sits on the Bench
• Episode 30: Lugaw, RA 11332, and common sense policy
• Episode 31: Understanding electoral protests
• Episode 32: Captain Ri and all the president’s men
• Episode 33: The law of NTF-ELCAC
• Episode 34: Lawyering under threat
• Episode 35: Duterte’s ICC prospects
• Episode 36: Plunderers and how to get them

If you have tips and suggestions for episodes, email the host at lian.buan@rappler.com. – Rappler.com