Designated ousters

A Quezon City Representative must have been seeing a lot of TV series, especially the US-produced “Designated Survivor” for her to have filed a bill allowing the delegation of an emergency successor to the president, apart from the constitutional line of succession, in case of unforeseen circumstances such as death and permanent disability.

Quezon City 2nd District Rep. Precious Hipolito-Castelo filed House Bill (HB) 4062, or the Presidential Succession Act, or an act giving the president the power to delegate his successor in the event the president, the vice president, the Senate president, and the House speaker die or become incapacitated to fill the role of the chief executive.

HB 4062 requires that the delegated successor be kept in a secure and undisclosed place during the occasion or gathering for which his appointment was made as she noted that the designated successor’s appointment would be pro hac vice (for the occasion) and limited to the circumstances under which it was made.

A similar bill was filed in the Senate earlier by another viewer of “Designated Survivor,” Panfilo Lacson, whose bill called for the designated survivor to be the “most senior senator” or the “most senior representative.”

Castelo’s version has the delegation of a successor chosen from among the Cabinet officials to take over the highest post.

Rep. Castelo acknowledged Section 8, Article 7 of the 1987 Constitution in her explanatory note, explaining that should there be an unlikely chance that the vice president, the Senate president and the House speaker become unavailable to fill the role of the president, especially in a major public or private event, someone else must assume the post for security purposes.

Castelo was quoted as saying that “apart from tightening security and safety during the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) and other official functions that require the presence of all upper and lower House members as well as the vice president and the president, we have to consider putting our affairs in order in such a way that we are prepared for the worst and try to avoid chaos in a worst case scenario.”

If such a law on the designated survivor is passed — apart from the fact that the Constitution will have to be changed through an amendment or by a constitutional change — it will be a useless law, if passed without any High Court challenge, since whoever drops a nuclear bomb, hitting all the constitutional successors as the 1987 Constitution decrees, all the people will be dead, too.

So, it is useless to have the designated successor, whether it be one of the numerous successors and designated successors and useless deputy speakers, or the Senate president pro-tem, or Sen. Panfilo Lacson or Rep. Castelo, both of whom have no chance of being elected president, since he or she will also be dead.

But that that scenario is too dire. Neither the US nor China would drop a nuclear bomb on this country since the South China Sea, the Reed Bank, Scarborough Shoal would be useless to either one.

Or take another scenario: Say the Muslim jihadists or assassins enter the picture and manage to assassinate the president, the vice president, the Senate majority leader and the House of Representatives speaker simultaneously, which would be too Hollywoodish and unrealistic, that named “designated Filipino survivor” outside of the five constitutionally designated presidential successors would also likely be assassinated, as the assassins would already know just who the designated survivor is, as it would be spelled out in the crafted law — assuming that the designated survivor bill would pass.

Still, Congress would still be functioning unless all of the members of Congress — senators and congressmen all start hiding under their beds — or quickly leaving the country. But a word of advice: Don’t hide in the US — at least not during the Donald Trump racist regime, since Filipinos are brown-skinned and may be deported.

There is no need at all for a law calling for a designated survivor since the present constitutional provisos have to apply. Congress then can craft a law that will call for an election within a number of days, as the Constitution states, for the nation to elect the successor to the presidency. This way, Filipinos can have an elected leader and not selected by our honorable shits.

These lawmakers who craft laws really should stop watching TV, or Netflix, or downloaded videos to come up with a copycat version of naming a “designated survivor.”

One more thing: Such a Philippine law on naming a designated survivor may really be a waste of time, going by the penchant of Philippine successors to the presidency in trampling the Constitution, staging revolts and simply taking over power unconstitutionally.

And these ousters of elected Philippine presidents are not just in the past. There are still active moves today to oust the sitting president, complete with the use of foreign lobby groups.

What is a more likely scenario is the emergence, not of designated survivors, but the usual designated ousters by the power-hungry politicians, with the help of the foreign controlled media, all salivating for the presidency.