MANILA--A former lawyer of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assailed on Sunday a proposal to require presidential candidates to participate in public debates, saying that would be unconstitutional.

Lawyer Romulo Macalintal said the Commission on Elections could only invite presidential as well as vice presidential candidates to debate but could not impose sanctions should they refuse to participate.

"To make it (attending debates) mandatory is to add another requirement for a presidential candidate to that provided for in the Constitution," Macalintal told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

He pointed out that Article 7, Section 2 of the Constitution only provided that a candidate for president and vice president be at least 40 years old, a registered voter, able to read and write, a Filipino citizen by birth and a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years prior to the election.

Macalintal, election lawyer of President Macapagal-Arroyo during the 2004 polls, was reacting to a proposal by Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento who suggested Friday that the election body passed a resolution requiring candidates to appear in a series of debates so that the voting public could gauge the capacity, potential and eloquence of the candidates.

Macalintal said that a requirement to attend debates would suffer the same fate of a law that required public officials to undergo mandatory drug tests.

The law was recently struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, saying that the Charter's provisions enumerating requirements for people desiring to run for elective public positions in the executive and legislative branches did not impose such a requirement.

"At any rate, by now people already know the qualifications of the persons expected to vie for the presidency and no amount of debate could change the public's perception. Their performance or non-performance in their respective areas had long been gauged by the voters," Macalintal said.

Instead of sponsoring debates, Macalintal said, the Comelec should concentrate on educating voters on the proper exercise of their right of suffrage "so they'll vote not on the basis of the ability of candidates to sing or dance but on the basis of the true qualities of a leader."

"Voters here tend to be too personality-oriented. Hence, it is Comelec's duty under the law to teach them how to choose the right candidates," Macalintal added.