{"id":51382,"date":"2015-06-06T23:17:44","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T15:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=51382"},"modified":"2015-06-06T23:17:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-06T15:17:44","slug":"president-aquino-dismisses-charter-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/06\/06\/president-aquino-dismisses-charter-change\/","title":{"rendered":"President Aquino dismisses Charter change"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/a>
President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III (Photo from Aquino’s official Facebook page)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 Amidst calls to extend his term, President Benigno Aquino III remained disinterested in amending the Constitution to extend his six-year term. Because for him, it was a risky move that could bring back the possibility of having another dictator in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy answer to those who are espousing an extension of terms is, we will undoubtedly have benefits for having a government that will not have to relearn how to govern, but at the same time we open the doors to somebody who might emulate former President Ferdinand Marcos and decide to stay in office forever,\u201d Aquino said in a press conference in Japan.<\/p>\n

It can be recalled that Marcos was elected as the Philippine president in 1965. He ran and won again as president in 1969. He then declared martial law to extend his term in 1972 but was ousted by the first People Power Revolution in 1986.<\/p>\n

During Marcos\u2019s reign, Aquino\u2019s father, late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., was assassinated. This tragic event led to the revolution, appointing Aquino\u2019s mother, Corazon Aquino as president.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Aquino\u2019s supporters also urged to extend her term. She, however, rejected all proposals. Like her, Aquino dismissed calls to extend his six-year term.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that is a very serious risk that our country, or my country, has to avoid. So I ask that we not consider reopening the Constitution for term limits,\u201d Aquino said.<\/p>\n

Departing from Charter change talks, Aquino was instead asked regarding his preferred successor. To this, the president did not mention any name yet but reiterated that he wanted someone who would continue the reforms and sustain the gains of his administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen will I endorse? I promised our people I was hoping it would be the end of June, but now it seems that I have to, by law, deliver a State of the Nation Address (SONA), which is on the last Monday of July. It will be shortly after that that I will endorse the person whom I believe can carry out the continuity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Aquino also stressed that he wanted the next president to maintain the country\u2019s sound relationship with Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think our people will elect a foolhardy replacement that will suddenly throw away all these very good economic partnerships that we have with Japan,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 Amidst calls to extend his term, President Benigno Aquino III remained disinterested in amending the Constitution to extend …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":51383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ph","category-politics","mauthors-cyra-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}