Article VII Section 2. No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.
This is taken from the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines. The section clearly states the requirements for being elected as the President of the Philippines. To sum it up, the job requirements are:
- Being a natural born citizen pf the Philippines
- Is a registered voter
- Has the ability to read and to write
- At least 40 years of age
- Has lived in the Philippines for at least ten years before the actual election starts
Now I asked a Political Science professor in the past about adding “at least high school graduate” to the requirements to avoid famous, but uneducated, people from getting elected and being used like in the days of former president Erap Estrada. The professor simply told me that by adding education to the requirements, it beats the whole purpose of democracy. Democracy gives chance to each person to lead the country if the people deems it to be their best interest. Educated or not.
What comes to mind now is the decision of Comelec to disqualify certain people from running by branding them as nuisance candidates. This is something that is needed for sure to avoid chaos during the electoral polls. However, what comes into mind again is the defeat of democracy. What if someone wants to run for president who has all the heart and good will to do what is right but was deemed by the said institution as a nuisance candidate just because he did not have enough money for campaigning? Isn’t that supposed to be his problem?
There are nuisance candidates right now who gets more votes during surveys compared to actual candidates. I’m not saying we go and let every person run for president, all I’m saying is that we keep getting the same results president after president. We hate our politicians for being traditional and for being all about themselves. We say that they are all the same. Well, maybe it’s time to elect our officials from an unorthodox source. Maybe it’s time we choose someone deemed to be a “nuisance candidate”.
My two pesos.
Posted on May 5, 2010
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