Source: The Daily Tribnue
From one unconstitutional act to another seems to be the dominant effort of the supporters of President Aquino who is pushing a “Re-elect PNoy for President” which the Palace tried to dismiss yesterday.
Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Her-minio Coloma said the move-ment does not have a constitu-tional basis which limits the Pre-sident to a one term of six years.
Allies of President Aquino in Congress, however, are aggressively pushing the revision of the Constitution purportedly to update restrictive economic provisions that block the inflow of investments to the country.
Constitutional experts, however, admitted that once the Charter is opened up for revisions there would be no guaranty that only economic provisions will be subject to revisions.
“It is clearly stated in the Constitution that those elected President are limited to one term of six years. Whatever are the aims of the petitioners, the Basic Law of the land will prevail so that’s how the talks about it ends. Let us respect what the Constitution says,” Coloma added.
Those behind the online campaign to re-elect Aquino claimed to have gathered 4 million supporters but which many suspects since the supposed came after the popularity rating of Aquino in different surveys dipped as a result of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) controversy.
Coloma, nonetheless, indicated that the Aquino administration has no involvement in the online effort.
He said, however, that the movement was spontaneous and a natural expression of public sentiment.
“We know the nature of social media. Everybody is free to express their belief and it is open to all. Nobody can control that. So despite all of these efforts, we need to remind them of the provision in the Constitution limiting the term of presidents,” he added.
Coloma in responding to a question on whether the movement was an expression of satisfaction on the performance of Aquino replied that it was the proponents of the movement who said that. “I don’t need to add further to what they wanted to say,” he added.
The social media account named “One more term for PNoy” stated that its aim is to push for one more term for Aquino “to continuously fight graft and corruption and big bully China.”
It carried slogans such as “One more term”, “Noynoy pa rin”, and “Re-elect PNoy for 2016”. It has one link which is the official Facebook account of Aquino.
Aquino had repeatedly dismissed plans to seek another term but recently he has been making political moves seeking a show of support from the public.
At the recent “Daylight Dialogue” forum in Malacañang, Aquino sought a show of support for his administration through the wearing of yellow ribbons.
The social media page also contained criticisms against the Supreme Court ruling on the DAP and siding with Aquino’s stubborn defense of the Palace money pool.
Supporters of Aquino wore yellow ribbon pins during his 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA) as a show of support.
Most of the members of the Liberal Party, which President Aquino is a member, noticeably had the yellow ribbons pinned to their respective Filipino attires.
Most of the members of the Liberal Party, which President Aquino is a member, noticeably had the yellow ribbons pinned to their respective Filipino attires.
The Palace, however, reiterated that when the President asked supporters to wear a yellow ribbon, it did not mean that he wanted to compete with other political part colors.
“The President believes that his supporters can show support as long as they want to and today (Monday) we see that his supporters voluntarily did,” Coloma had said.
Coloma earlier said that while Malacanang took the President’s call seriously, they did not want to think of it “too seriously.”
While others had their own yellow ribbon hand-made, others opted to wear ribbons designed to look like a flower.
According to Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice, even non Liberal Party members requested to have their own yellow ribbon pins to also show support for the President, despite belonging to different parties.
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