Ex-SC justice Mendoza: VP becoming president isn't reelection but succession

President Rodrigo Duterte may run for vice president even if becoming the second highest elected official would place him next in the line of succession for the presidency, retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Vicente Mendoza has said.

According to Joseph Morong's report on "Stand for Truth", Mendoza said the Constitution only prohibited a president from running for any reelection.

"Now when you speak of the President, running for Vice President, with the possibility that he may become President because the incumbent President dies, resigned from office, is permanently disabled, or anong tawag diyan, impeached, he does not run for re-election. He succeeds," Mendoza said.

"So the word is, succession. Now, there is no question that the... the Vice Presidency is in the line for succession of the President, and as I understand the objection, it is that he will become President in the event of those contingencies, but that is not re- election, that is succession," he added.

For former Commission on Elections chairman Christian Monsod, one of the members of the 1987 Constitutional Commission, Duterte running for vice president was to go against the intent of the Constitution.

“The move is meant to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition on any reelection because the vice president is in the mandatory line of succession to a vacancy that can be created for self-serving and personal purposes,” Lawyer Monsod said.

Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) president Domingo Cayosa said that the scenario was not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon has said Duterte’s vice presidential bid “goes against the spirit” of the Constitution and warned of “serious problems” in the future in the line of succession to the presidency. —Joahna Lei Casilao/NB, GMA News