Freed from accountability, a one-term president has vast powers over treasury and bureaucracy

April 12, 2008

Our 1987 Constitution limits a president to only one term of six years.

This limitation was supposed to keep presidents from ruling for life, as the late Ferdinand Marcos was about to do.

Temptation to bad governance

But six years with no re-election tempts a president to ignore the tenets of good governance and make the most of what he has for himself—to hell with public accountability, opinion polls and exhortations from the churches.

And it harms Philippine republican democracy by taking away from the citizenry a valuable means to check presidents and their ruling parties.

That ability to check was available to them under the 1935 Constitution. It is possessed by American voters whose presidential system we Filipinos, whether we admit it or not, wish we had. That means is the possibility of voting against a bad president seeking re-election.

Our present system’s no re-election rule makes citizens helpless for six years against a president they do not trust and respect.

A president who knows he has six years to indulge himself with the powers of his office can ignore public opinion without fear of losing anything—except being charged with criminal wrongdoing at the end of his term.

But he can easily arrange for his and his confederates’ safety by using his overarching powers over the government’s bureaucracy and treasury.

The only recourse for the people is impeachment. But an elected president supported by a big majority in the House of Representatives—and steeled by a deformed conscience that will not shrink from ensuring his command of the majority by hook or by crook—will never get impeached, given all the powers available to him.

Only through free, fair—and frequent—elections can citizens retain final control over the public agenda. This is no longer possible in the Philippines under our 1987 Constitution.

Powers over the bureaucracy

Under the Constitution, the Philippine president has power to appoint bureaucrats down to assistant-director level, as well as officers of public corporations, whose financial resources are formidable.

While the American president can only appoint at most 800 bureaucrats, and the British prime minister only 200, the Philippine president—according to the valedictory speech of the much-admired Karina Constantino-David, speaking at the Makati Business Club virtually on the eve of her retirement as Civil Service Commissioner—appointed half of the 6,000 managerial positions in the government, which, she said, leads to a “messy equation.” The World Bank estimates the Philippine president has power to appoint 4,800 top to middle-level bureau heads and assistants.

Karina Constantino-David said career-level employees of the government such as undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and directors are the ones most vulnerable to political pressures. Definitely, she said, the “high-level positions in the government are being controlled by political padrinos or politicians themselves” and these are of course wielding power derived from the president.

All in all, she said, the president is allowed to appoint at least 10,000 people to fill government positions.

Powers over govt money

The Philippine president has control of government money—whether it is the share of a province, city or town of the Internal Revenue Allotment or the pork barrel budgeted for every congressman and senator, in addition to calamity funds and various development funds such as that now being spent to solve the rice crisis.

This control over the purse strings make it possible for a president to command unbeatable majorities in the House of Representatives, enforce the obeisance of governors, mayors and barangay leaders and—despite a president’s unpopularity—continue to have a substantial number of citizen-loyalists to come forward and hold pro-administration rallies especially when the president comes to town.

Governors and mayors who do not kowtow to the president most often do not get their allocations on time and in full. Especially for poor local government units, the IRA allocation is the only source of funds.

In Camarines Sur, the opposition mayor of the fourth-class town of San Fernando told The Manila Times that he has not received a centavo of the town’s IRA since the year began.

The law of course requires the Malacañang Department of Budget and Management to release IRA funds in full to all local government units regardless of the political affiliation of their political leaders.

The mayor is retired Army Captain Fermin Mabulo, 34, who got elected as a part of the Magdaló political group of former Navy Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes 4th who had run and won (with the United Opposition) a Senate seat. Mabulo, with then-Lt. Trillanes, was an Oakwood Mutiny participant.

Mayor Mabulo told The Times the municipal treasurer thinks the release of the IRA will come next month. One whole quarter’s delay is apparently normal.

San Fernando, Camarines Sur’s experience, is normal for opposition bailiwicks. But not for the cities of Manila, Makati and Pasay—all governed by oppositionists.

The cities ruled by Mayor Alfredo Lim of Manila, Mayor Jejomar Binay of Makati (who is also the president of the United Opposition) and Mayor Peewee Trinidad of Pasay have all been getting their IRA in full and on time, the treasurers of these cities told The Times.

Power over pork barrel

But the pork barrel—or the Priority Development Assistance Fund, which used to be called the Countrywide Development Fund—is not being given by Malacañang to Senator Trillanes. Trillanes had applied for his full P200-million pork barrel or PDAF share in 2007. He named specific hospitals he was giving shares of the money to. He talked to the DBM executives and applied for the funds. Until now, no money has been released, so for 2008 he has not bothered to file for his PDAF allocation.

Sen. Mar Roxas, president of the Liberal Party, is not one of the favored senators who are getting their PDAF from the Palace. Senator Lacson does not get any because he has rejected the pork barrel system and wants it abolished anyway.

Senator Chiz Escudero told The Times: “No, I have not been able to use the CDF [PDAF] that should go to my district in Sorsogon since the tile in 2005 that we in the opposition filed the impeachment case in the Lower House. This is no longer surprising to me and to my fellow opposition lawmakers. What is most disheartening about this policy is that the administration doesn’t seem to realize that they have some supporters among the constituents of elected opposition congressmen and senators. These members of our constituencies suffer the consequences of the PDAF withheld.”

Administration spokesmen, however, reply to this by claiming that the money is sent directly to the towns and provinces of the opposition lawmakers. If this is the case, then the administration could be violating the law. For the pork barrel funds are specifically allotted to every individual congressman and senator.

Congress’ power of the purse

The power given by law to presidents to “realign the budget” also gives tremendous power that veritably does away with the Constitutionally enshrined principle of the “power of the purse” granted to Congress.

Although some rules do limit the realignments that a president can do, the fact that he can shift money around, contrary to what the actual appropriations measure says because that was the will of the lawmakers who deliberated and debated the provisions of the law, the president is in reality the true ruler of the country’s coffers.