MANILA - If he only has himself to think about, University of the Philippines professor Randy David says he would have been ready to fight what many might consider a suicidal, quixotic battle against a political giant.

"Suicide kung suicide. I was prepared to file my certificate of candidacy."

David, a resident of Guagua, Pampanga earlier announced plans to challenge President Arroyo's bid as representative of the 2nd district of Pampanga in the 2010 polls.

His plans changed, however, after consulting with his family, particularly his brothers and sisters who live in the area. "They briefed me about what is happening on the ground."

The exchanges, he told abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak, made him realize that his family would not let him go through the entire exercise alone "even if this is just a protest."

"Our society does not allow" for members of the family not to become involved, he said. This is particularly since he is neither a member of a political party or part of a political clan. "The fall back is family and relatives."

Extraordinary

David's predicament is understandable. Had it pushed through, the contest between him and President Arroyo would have been highly unusual to say the very least.

It is so unusual, David says, that framers of the Constitution never even considered that such a thing could happen.

Asked why the constitutionalists did not have the foresight to explicitly say the president is not allowed to run for a lower office, Joaquin Bernas earlier said, "The only answer I could give was that no one of the Commissioners (not me, anyway) thought that a sitting President might be so humble as to seek a lower position."

Indeed, in any career, the ordinary path is to start from the bottom, work one's way up and then retire.

The same goes for those who made a career in politics. Unless popular from the start, politicians often start out by serving in some local post. The few who were able to parlay the local post to gain some public recognition then use this as jumping board to vie for a senatorial post. Still fewer are those who get to take a shot at the zenith--the presidency.

This is not the career path that President Arroyo is proposing to take by filing her certificate of candidacy for the post of representative of the 2nd district of Pampanga.

"It's like an incumbent governor who is running for barangay councilman but using all resources at his disposal at the given moment to promote his candidacy," David said.

It will make her the only elected President in the history of the Philippines to ever do so. And such a career path is so uncommon that, globally, very few leaders ever followed a similar route.
 
In the Philippines, the only other politician who ran for a lower post after serving as president was Jose Laurel. Laurel, however, was never elected president. He served under extraordinary circumstances, having been appointed as president of the Japanese-sponsored Republic of the Philippines during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1951, he sought a seat in the Senate under the Nacionalista Party and won.

In the United States, the only president to do this was John Quincy Adams.

Common traits

Curiously, there are a lot of parrallelisms between Adams and Arroyo.

Both were offspring of former presidents. John Adams, the father of John Quincy Adams, was president of the United States from 1797–1801. More than two decades later, his son, John Quincy Adams, also became president--serving from 1825 to 1829.

Both Arroyo and Adams won the presidency under controversial circumstances.

Arroyo's victory over her rivals in 2004 came under serious question, particularly after recordings of her phone conversations with elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano were made public the following year.

The younger Adams, for his part, did not actually win the initial vote in the presidential election of 1824. Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson, one of his four rivals to the post, initially won a plurality of both the electoral and the popular votes.

Because no candidate won a majority of the electoral votes at the time, the US House of Representatives had to vote on the top three candidates: Jackson, Adams, and William Crawford of Georgia.

When an incapacitating stroke rendered Crawford unfit to be commander-in-chief, only Adams and Jackson were left in the race. However, Clay, who came in fourth and thus was ineligible, retained considerable power and influence as Speaker of the House. He personally disliked Jackson, thus threw his support to Adams, who was elected by the House on February 9, 1825, on the first ballot.

Needless to say, Adams' victory shocked Jackson, who fully expected to be elected president having gained the plurality of the electoral and popular votes. Clay's subsequent appointment by Adams as Secretary of State—the position that Adams and his three predecessors had held before becoming President—outraged Jacksonian Democrats who saw this as proof that Adams and Clay had struck a "corrupt bargain." This overshadowed Adams' term and greatly contributed to his loss to Jackson four years later.

Lopsided contest

Both Laurel and Adams, however, did not have the advantages that Arroyo will be enjoying in her bid to represent Pampanga's 2nd district at the time they ran for a lower post after serving as president.

At the time he was running for congress, Adams was no longer an incumbent president. This was because, as an incumbent, Adams initially sought re-election in 1828 but lost the race to Jackson, his rival of the previous polls.

Laurel, for his part, initially ran for president against Elpidio Quirino in 1949. He was no longer president when he ran for the Senate in 1951.

Arroyo, however, is running as an incumbent president.

The letter of the law does not bar the president from doing so. A rider in the Fair Elections Act repealed an old provision in the election law which required incumbents, except those running president and vice-president, to resign if they are running for a position other than the one they are currently holding.

The Fair Elections Act, with this accompanying rider, was signed into law by Arroyo herself having been enacted by Congress a month after EDSA 2 catapulted her to Malacañang.

It would have been possible to challenge the rider before the high court on grounds that it violates the constitutional provision that says a particularly law should only embrace one topic. After all, the Fair Elections Act is all about the lifting of the ban on political advertising.

However, while the Constitution prohibits riders in legislation, election law expert Sixto Brillantes says it might be too late to have the rider repealed, particularly since many politicians have already benefited from it over the past 8 years. In 2010, Arroyo will also not be the only candidate benefiting from the repeal of the old law.

Beyond the legalities, however, people question the morality of Arroyo's decision to vie for a lower post while holding the top post of the land because, as president, she literally has no equal in terms of control over state resources and influence.

"As social scientist, I say there are many unruled areas," David said. "There are areas of social behavior where there are no explicit laws because in many instances, the existing custom, the existing sense of shame and sensitivity to what is regarded as decent or what we call delicadeza are deemed sufficient to keep people in line. You don't need specific laws."

"It does not take a very brilliant person to know that the intention of framers of constitution was to prevent the occupant of this highest office of the land from using the powers of that office and all resources at its disposal to promote the political ambition of the occupant of the office," David further pointed out.

Unfortunately, he said, President Arroyo's lawyers have interpreted the provision very literally in order to provide a warrant for her running as candidate for some position even as she retains her position as president.

Politics, patronage and family

And David says the president has been taking full advantage of her superior position.

In the past months, President Arroyo has reportedly visited the district almost 50 times. Each time, David says, the president's retinue would include staff from the social welfare department and other government agencies. And during such visits, free Philhealth cards are given away, he said, and cash will be passed on in the guise of microfinance projects. Schools, canals and dikes are fixed.

"We are thankful for that. But they should not encourage this thinking that the only way you can get such facilities is if the president comes from your district or ethnic group." People even get angry with him, he said, for "dividing the Kapampangans."

He also lamented the fact that people have taken to expect the same form of patronage of him and his family, ever since he announced his plans to run. "This is because they are encouraging this. Even if they use state resources, they dole them out as it is their money," David told abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak in a phone interview.

"When I go there, people go to me and ask me if they can have basketball shirts, or balls." He said he experienced being at the receiving end of the culture of begging, the culture that tells people that an aspirant for public office should help them financially first.

Even despite these, David maintained he would not have minded a lopsided battle. What riles him, he said, was that this is forcing his family to dip into their own savings to help him win.

The eldest in the family, he said he was particularly moved by the situation of younger brother Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, who is currently auxilliary bishop of Pampanga.

Bishop David, the 10th among the David siblings, was earlier quoted in reports to have said that the President would go against the principles of “decency and propriety” if she insisted on running for Congress.

"He acts as moral shepherd of province. If he campaigns for me, it would undermine his authority as moral shephered. I would not wish for him to cross that line," Professor David said.

Public opinion

David insists that not filing a certificate of candidacy does not mean he will no longer challenge Arroyo's decision to run for an elective post even while she is an incumbent president.

"I will continue fighting. But I will not allow myself to be boxed by the political dynamics in Pampanga," he said. He explained that, instead of running for a post, he will seek the larger arena which he has "sought for his entire life"--the arena of public opinion, as a social critic, and a public individual.

This, he said, means that in the coming months, he will participate in the electoral exercise not as a politician but "as somebody who has studied the political life of nation who has a lot to share with young voters." Young people, he explained are wondering what the larger context of the election is, in order to know who to vote for because "this is going to be a crucial election."

David also said deciding not to run against the President should not disqualify him from contesting the constitutionality of her remaining in office while running for a lower post.

In fact, he said, if he entered the political arena, which is resolved by the number of votes, it makes him "morally disqualified to try to win the battle by going to the SC because SC is a different arena, and looks at legal arguments."

With David out of the race, the only other person left to challenge Arroyo's bid is an unknown--Feliciano Serrano, an electrical engineer from Porac, Pampanga. -- Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza, abs-cbnNEWS.com/ Newsbreak, with a report from Maricar Bautista, ABS-CBN News