Sometime in February 2016 Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, then 71, admitted having four ailments. “I have no cancer. I have four illnesses, but they are not fatal,” the then-presidential candidate said to reporters who asked him if he had suffered a stroke while campaigning in Quezon City in February 2016. The mayor admitted that he was confined overnight at Cardinal Santos Medical Center in Greenhills, San Juan City, for severe migraine, not a stroke, and had to skip a speech before a medical convention.
He has also admitted that he was diagnosed to have a respiratory infection, which triggered a headache, nausea and vomiting. “I did not know I have acute bronchitis. I was told to rest and take [an] antibiotic,” he added.
Duterte also denied having cancer. The then-frontrunner revealed he had a slipped disc from a motorcycle accident 10 years ago. He also has Barrett’s esophagus, which involves tissue lining the esophagus, and Buerger’s disease, a constriction of the blood vessels caused by accumulation of nicotine due to smoking. Speculations about the health of now President Duterte has not stopped, and is unlikely to stop, especially since he “disappeared” from the public eye for a week this June and missed a number of official functions, including the 119th anniversary of Philippine Independence on June 12. Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella assured the public that the President was not suffering from any sickness, but that he was just very tired and needed some rest, especially because of his hectic schedules visiting military camps in Cabadabaran, Agusan del Norte, and Butuan to talk to the troops. Although there is no official statement from Malacañang, Cabinet Secretary Leoncio B. Evasco Jr. reportedly briefed members of the Cabinet on June 16 that the President was brought to Cardinal Santos Medical Center in Greenhills on June 15, where he reportedly underwent a “peritoneal dialysis”, a treatment for early kidney disorder. The medical center has not issued any official media bulletin.
I am not worried about the rumors or speculations about the President’s health. If he “disappears” to get much-needed rest, or to submit to doctor-prescribed medical tests and procedures to address the ailments he has admitted as having, let us leave him be and not fuel speculations. If the President needs medical care, then he is entitled to the best medical care available. Let us not compound his medical condition by making irresponsible speculations, rumors, unfair reporting and “alternative facts”.
I am not worried about the President’s medical health, but I am worried about his “political health”.
As early as Villena v. Secretary of Interior, (67 Philippine 451 [1939]) it has already been established that there is one repository of executive powers, and that is the President of the Republic. This means that when the Constitution, Article 7, Section 1, speaks of executive power, it is granted to the President and no one else. Corollarily, it is only the President, as Chief Executive, who is authorized to exercise emergency power as provided under the Constitution, Article 6, Section 23, as well as what became known as the calling-out powers under Article 7, Section 7.
“Springing from the well-entrenched constitutional precept of One President is the notion that there are certain acts which, by their very nature, may only be performed by the President as the head of the State. One of these acts or prerogatives is the bundle of Commander in Chief powers to which the calling-out powers constitutes a portion. The President’s emergency powers, on the other hand, is balanced only by the legislative act of Congress, as embodied in the second paragraph of the Constitution, Article 6, Section 23” (Kalayaan v. Tan, 675 SCRA 482 [2012]).
The power to declare a state of martial law is subject to the Supreme Court’s authority to review the factual basis thereof. By constitutional fiat, the calling-out power, which is of lesser gravity than the power to declare martial law, is bestowed upon the President alone. As noted in Villena, “[t]here are certain constitutional powers and prerogatives of the Chief Executive of the Nation [that] must be exercised by him in person, and no amount of approval or ratification will validate the exercise of any of those powers by any other person. Such for instance, is his power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and proclaim martial law…” (Id.)
Indeed, while the President is still a civilian, the Constitution, Article 2, Section 3, mandates that civilian authority is, at all times, supreme over the military, making the civilian president the nation’s supreme military leader. The net effect of Article 2, Section 3, when read with Article 7, Section 18, is that a civilian President is the ceremonial, legal and administrative head of the armed forces. The Constitution does not require that the President must possess military training and talents, but as Commander in Chief, he has the power to direct military operations and to determine military strategy. Normally, he would be expected to delegate the actual command of the armed forces to military experts; but the ultimate power is his. As Commander in Chief, he is authorized to direct the movement of the naval and military forces placed by law at his command, and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual” (Fr. Joaquin Bernas S.J., The Philippine Constitution A Comprehensive Reviewer [2006] p. 314.)
In addition to being the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the President also acts as the leader of the country’s police forces, under the mandate of the Constitution, Article 7, Section 17, which provides that, “The President shall have control of all the executive departments, bureaus and offices. He shall ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.” During the deliberations of the Constitutional Commission on the framing of this provision, Bernas defended the retention of the word “control”, employing the same rationale of singularity of the Office of the President, as the only Executive under the presidential form of government.
It is, therefore, imperative that we are assured of the political health of the President. Does he have control of the military as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces? From whom does the Army take orders? There are rumors (from the usual suspects) that the Maute uprising is US/CIA-inspired because the weapons retrieved from the battlefields of Marawi are allegedly US high- powered weapons. Also, the country’s police force deputized by the President in his all-out war against drugs, is seemingly out of control with the rising number of extrajudicial killings and rumors that the police themselves are entrenched in the drug trade. Not to mention the almost failed peace talks, the threats from the communist left; the looming constitutional crisis because of attacks on sacred institutions, like the Supreme Court, by an irresponsible and abusive Lower House leadership; media-attention craving opposition senators; the veiled threats of war by China over our territorial claims; and the possibility of a “military junta” should the generals refuse to respect our Constitutional succession.
Is the political health of the President strong enough to survive and prevail over these challenges? Does he still have the passion, fire and political will that elected him into this country’s highest office?
We can only pray and hope as a people that he does!