Under the Constitution of the United States, the president is the head of the executive department, and his successor is the vice president. Although the vice president is the second-highest executive official in America, he cannot exercise executive power, or any power which the US Constitution vests exclusively and personally in the president.
At best, and only because there is no provision in the US Constitution or in federal legislation prohibiting it, the president can designate the vice president as his representative in important ceremonial state functions.
There are, however, functions which the president cannot delegate to the vice president. For instance, while the vice president can represent the president in an international summit abroad, the vice president cannot approve or veto, for and on behalf of the president, any bill approved by Congress and sent to the White House for the latter’s approval or veto. This function must be exercised exclusively and personally by the president himself.
In legal theory, the vice president of the United States is a mere spare tire in the highest echelons of executive power, one to be remembered only when the president dies, or is unable to perform his duties. That is not so in legal and political reality.
The US Constitution explicitly provides that the vice president shall be the presiding officer in the Senate, but he may not vote on any piece of legislation, except when his vote is needed to break a tie. Because the vice president has a job in the Senate, and a full time one at that, nobody in America sees him as a mere spare tire in the White House, or as a sidekick of the president, or one who simply tags along with the president wherever the latter goes.
Since the US Constitution mandates that the vice president must serve as the presiding officer of the US Senate, the president may not appoint the vice president to a cabinet position.
Morever, since the vice president works as the presiding officer in the US Senate, the vice president can honestly say that he worked for and earned the salary he draws from the American taxpayers. In other words, the salary which the vice president draws is a salary duly earned, not as the president’s constitutional successor, but as one who works in the US Senate.
Sadly, the foregoing system does not obtain in the Philippines, even if the Philippine constitutional and political system is designed after the American model.
The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines does not impose a specific job or duty for the vice president of the Philippines. It simply mandates that the Vice President shall be the successor of the President. That is not a job or a duty; that is mere a default template.
Although the Constitution allows the president of the Philippines to appoint the vice president to a position in his cabinet, the vice president has no vested right to any cabinet post. If the president does not want to appoint the vice president to his Cabinet, he cannot be legally compelled to do so. As the head of the executive department, the president can also fire the vice president from the cabinet.
Despite the fact that the vice president of the Philippines has no specific job or duty under the 1987 Constitution, the vice president is still paid a salary from taxpayers’ money. That’s a salary drawn from public funds for glorified unemployment. It’s a salary for a mere waiting game, with no work done or required.
On the other hand, if the vice president were at least a member of the Cabinet, the vice president deserves being compensated with public funds, not as vice president, but as a member of the Cabinet.
Vice President Leni Robredo is currently enjoying the perks of a high, pompous position in the national political hierarchy. Since she is no longer a member of the Cabinet of President Rodrigo Duterte, Robredo’s compensation from public funds is for her glorified unemployment as vice president, and not for any other work in the civil service. Poor taxpayers!
Robredo is also provided a “vice presidential mansion” in Quezon City, one owned by the government and maintained with public funds. No other vice president in recent memory was given a mansion, and for a “job” consisting of nothing more than waiting for a vacancy in the big seat in Malacañang. Poor taxpayers!
Her administrative staff are also paid salaries taken from the public treasury. To all intents and purposes, they are paid to assist a boss who has nothing to do in the first place. Poor taxpayers!
Robredo could have avoided her current predicament if she remained in President Duterte’s Cabinet. A position in the Cabinet, of course, requires that one should not openly espouse views that contradict the President’s. Robredo repeatedly violated that protocol, and as such, her discharge from the Cabinet was inevitable. Thus, Robredo blew her only chance to justify her salary from taxpayers’ money.
If Robredo is the righteous public official she portrays herself to be, she should resign her high office posthaste, if only to stop the shameless wastage of public funds for her salary, the maintenance of her mansion, and the payment of the needless expenses of her office, particularly the salaries of her assistants who help her in their “official” pursuit and accomplishment of nothing.
In the event that Robredo does not want to resign on the sweeping assumption that she was “elected by the people,” she should at least waive her salary as vice president, and the budget Congress annually allocates for her. Robredo should also vacate the “vice presidential mansion” and live in her own house, like other elected officials (other than the President) do.
Come to think of it, although a senator does more work than the vice president does, the vice president enjoys free housing. The senator does not. Hmmm.