IN THE context of the Philippine political system, the vice presidency seems irrelevant during times of normalcy. It is an office created solely as a redundancy. It has all the trappings of prestige and power, including a budget for its maintenance, but has no legal or constitutional function whatsoever until something dramatic happens.
It is said that the position is a heartbeat away from the highest post in the land, but it is also a few senatorial impeachment votes removed from it. Despite being the second highest elective position, it is largely passive, but in the event the incumbent president resigns, dies, is incapacitated, or disqualified, the vice presidency takes a life all its own and regains its importance to the nation’s peaceful transition of power. This happened in 2001 when then President Joseph Estrada was ousted and Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over. The Supreme Court later upheld Macapagal-Arroyo’s ascendancy ruling that Estrada was deemed to have constructively resigned as president when he abandoned Malacañang at the height of massive demonstrations at Edsa.
Three decades hence, the hastily crafted 1987 Constitution that does not provide for a strong two-party system, a requisite for a well-functioning unitary form of government, continues to spook the nation’s political life. Without a mechanism to ensure that the two highest officials of the land come from the same party, the nation has suffered the ignominy of seeing ideologically incompatible leaders trying their hardest to be nice to each other. Since the vice president has no official function aside from being a perpetual executive-in-waiting and in this case no common party loyalty to speak of, it is inevitable that at some point differences between them would explode.
This is the situation prevailing now where the elected vice president of the republic condemns certain policies of the government to which she is technically a part of in domestic and international forums. The backlash from these statements has chilling effects on the country’s reputation and economic well-being. Sadly, no one can stop the vice president from exercising her freedom of speech since it is guaranteed by the country’s fundamental law, however, flawed it may be in other respects.
The drive to change the constitution and shift to federalism could very well be the answer to the conundrum that is the vice presidency. The presidential form can be retained but a provision to ensure a vigorous two-party system that requires the election of the president and the vice president from the same party must be enshrined in the basic law. If this decision is made, it is also advocated that the vice president be assigned a specific job or jobs to make the position more active and useful to the country.
Another option is to adopt the parliamentary form of federalism where there is no need for a vice president. The head of government in the parliamentary system is chosen among the members of the majority party in the legislature. In case the prime minister is deemed unfit to continue, resigns, dies, or is incapacitated he or she is merely replaced by another member of parliament, again chosen by the party having the most number of members.
The 1987 Constitution is found clearly wanting in helping the country realize its full potential. Many of its provisions, one of which is the incongruity of its bias for a multi-party format despite the executive’s unitary presidential set-up, have put a damper on the nation’s pursuit of its destiny as a developed society. The economic provisions limiting foreign land and corporate ownership are another constitutional imprimatur that needs to be revised in order to encourage investment from other countries. But that is best taken up at another time. What is clear is that the constitution needs to be changed and the question of the relevance of the vice presidency is only one of the many improvements that should be addressed therein.