MANILA, Philippines — If Mar can’t win it, just stay put?
Interior Secretary Mar Roxas: ‘Committed’ to platform of Aquino and anticorruption agenda. INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
Malacañang rejected on Thursday the idea that President Benigno Aquino III has become open to a term extension only because of the administration’s “shallow bench” in the 2016 presidential elections and the slim chances of Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II, the presumptive standard-bearer, of winning.
According to Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, “the more correct perspective” is the President’s purported “desire to continue the reforms he has started and ensure that they become permanent.”
“On the issue at hand, what’s important for the President is to get the public pulse. That is what’s primarily on the mind of our President,” he told reporters.
Coloma kept repeating the same line when bombarded by questions on the President’s apparent change of mind on seeking another term, one that would require amending the same Constitution ratified under his late mother’s administration.
In an exclusive interview with TV5 Wednesday, Aquino said he was aware that he was limited to a six-year term when he assumed office in 2010.
“Now, after having said that, of course, I have to listen to my bosses [the people],” he said, but clarified that he would not “automatically go after an additional term.”
“Before all of these happened, I admit I had a closed mind. But now I realized that there is judicial reach. Congress and the executive may act but they can be punished anytime,” he said.
Coloma said entertaining another term to purportedly continue the reforms he had started did not indicate the President’s “messianic tendencies.”
“He didn’t say that only he would do that,” he said. “His platform [of government] is his social contract with the Filipino people. What he said was his objective to change and provide transformation to our society.”
Asked if Vice President Jejomar Binay, who has long declared his intention to run for President, should be “insulted” by Aquino’s openness to term extension, Coloma said: “The Vice President himself issued a statement saying he respects the President’s decision.”
Coloma insisted that Aquino has remained “consistent” with his desire to “listen to his bosses” as “one of the basic principles of his governance.”
But Coloma did not address the President’s apparent inconsistency with his previous position against Charter change and term extension.
Last year, Aquino told Bloomberg: “I didn’t have any ambition to be president. It was fate. The people found me. I am sure they will be able to find another one out of 95 million.”
Even his late mother, former President Corazon Aquino, was adamant against term extension. In her final State of the Nation Address in 1991, she told the joint session of Congress: “My term is ending and so is yours. As we came, so should we go.”
In her book, “In the Name of Democracy and Prayer,” Mrs. Aquino recalled how she had rejected suggestions to seek another term.
“My answer was a categorical no,” she wrote. “I had not been inaugurated under the present Constitution and it did not bind me in strict terms, but I had campaigned for it and therefore took upon myself the moral obligation to follow, if not its letter then its spirit, that a presidency must accomplish its goal within six years.”
Aquino has often spoken of his parents’ legacy, particularly their role in restoring Philippine democracy, as a major guiding principle in his governance.
How the President would find out if his so-called “bosses” really wanted him to stay put, and what he would do afterward, were not clear to Coloma.
“No,” Coloma said when asked if Aquino wanted to know “for his information only.” “What he said was he wanted to make the [social] transformation permanent.”
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