HOW long can an elective official serve and remain effective? The answer must vary, in the same way that levels of competence and dedication vary from one individual to the next. The 1987 Constitution provides that elective officials in the local governments and House of Representatives should serve for no more than nine consecutive years or three back-to-back terms.
Recently, the Lower House proposed a four-year term for members of the House of Representatives, as well as elective officials in the local governments and federal states. Lawmakers behind Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) 15 specified no term limit. An earlier version of the proposed federal charter, the one prepared by a consultative committee the Office of the President had created, also specified a four-year term for local and federal state officials. But that draft provided for only one reelection, or eight consecutive years, at most, for the regional governor and all other officials under him or her.
Lawmakers sent RBH 15 back to the committee level last week, which gives the rest of us a chance to weigh in and let our district lawmakers know what we think of the idea of removing term limits. (Consider, too, the proposed two-party system and the prohibition on party-switching among elective officials and candidates six months after or before an election.) There is no Cebuano among the 22 lawmakers who pushed for RBH 15, but that doesn’t mean none of them support it.
There’s nothing wrong with rethinking the idea of term limits. One might argue that the absence of a term limit in RBH 15, except for the presidency and the vice presidency, serves the idea of the State seeking to “guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service.” (One might also argue that banning political dynasties would be undemocratic.) What we lack is a sound evaluation of how well the three-term limit has served us in the last 31 years. Did the few politicians who managed to skirt the term limit end up serving their constituents well?
There’s a helpful discussion on term limits in a Supreme Court ruling last January 2013. At the center of the case was Abelardo Abundo Sr. of Viga, Catanduanes, who ran for mayor in the elections of 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2010. In 2004, however, the municipal board of canvassers first proclaimed Jose Torres as the mayor. It wasn’t until two years later, in May 2006, that Abundo won his protest. He held office for about 13 months out of 36 in the 2004-2007 term. Torres, who again ran for mayor in 2010, tried to get Abundo disqualified by saying that the latter had already served three straight terms. Abundo, the case records showed, defeated Torres in May 2010 by 219 votes.
Less than two weeks after the 2010 elections, private citizen Ernesto Vega filed a quo warranto case against Abundo. The Regional Trial Court in Virac ruled in Vega’s favor in August of that year and declared Abundo ineligible to serve as mayor. In 2012, the Commission on Elections affirmed the court’s ruling and said that in its view, Abundo had already served three consecutive terms and shouldn’t have run for mayor again in 2010.
The Supreme Court disagreed. It decided that Abundo and the voters who had chosen him had suffered from an involuntary interruption in 2004-2007, when Abundo served for less than half of the three-year term he had won. The Court said: “Like the framers of the Constitution, we bear in mind that we ‘cannot arrogate unto ourselves the right to decide what the people want’ and hence, should, as much as possible, ‘allow the people to exercise their own sense of proportion and rely on their own strength to curtail the power when it overreaches itself.’”
One idea behind term limits is that over time, the value of experience becomes less important than the need for change and for making the privilege of public office available to more people. But what happens when the people decide they want more of the same?
(isolde.amante@gmail.com)