WordPress Daily Prompt: What is the most fun way to exercise?
Answer: Outdoors, in gentle sun and wind.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr Bongbong has been outdoors on official functions lately almost every other day but followers of Duterte keep spreading posts that “he has Stage 4 Cancer”:
Law on the President’s Health, fake news, freedom of info and privacy
Under the Philippine Constitution, the President has a specifically limited kind of privacy as to his health — the Constitution has made sure of this: Here’s one of the constitutional provisions on it:
Section 12, Article VII Philippine Constitution : In case of serious illness of the President, the public shall be informed of the state of his health. The Members of the Cabinet in charge of national security and foreign relations and the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, shall not be denied access to the President during such illness.
The bone of contention would be the concept of “serious illness” , and the manner by which the public would be informed.
Who defines “serious illness” in the context of the constitutional intent based on the entirety of the Construction?
Lawyers or doctors? — or the public? (Can you see how I’m making this discussion more fun by engaging all the professions, and the public, and being fair to all sides including the so-called fake news peddlers 😆).
Lawyers would tell you that the context of “serious illness” under the Constitution is: Inability of the President to perform the functions of the office.
Those functions are: Governance, comprehension and making decisions, and sending out orders to carry out state policies and solutions.
That means the President should : NOT be unconscious, NOT be incoherent and can communicate, NOT be clinically psychotic and NOT be clinically cognitively impaired.
Who determines that the President has or does not have the abovedescribed conditions and illnesses? (Conditions or illnesses that make the President unconscious for days on end, incoherent, unable to communicate, clinically psychotic, clinically cognitively impaired, etc). Who determines that?
The answer is: A Doctor — or a Medical Physician who has seen and treated the President. When does it become necessary?
Ideally, we should have a tradition, just like in progressive countries of constitutional democracies, of the office of the Chief Executive releasing annual or yearly medical bulletins on the President’s Health after an annual medical exam and checkup, certified by the state medical doctor.
We don’t have that tradition in the Philippines.
So … it is a legal requirement only in case of “serious illness”. Is it evident that he has serious illness as to be unable to exercise the functions of the office? Is he unconscious? incoherent? unable to communicate? If not, can a medical doctor determine just based on his public appearances that he has serious illness as to render him unable to perform the functions of his office, e.g., it would render him unconscious for days on end, or incoherent, unable to communicate, etc. ? Here is President Bongbong 12 hours ago (see video below)
The President’s PCO announced that it would file criminal complaints against those fake news peddlers spreading those posts that the President is terminally ill, and send them to jail. The better way is to avail of the self-regulation mechanisms of the social media platform companies thru which the fake news is peddled. You have a Department of Information Communication and Technology (DICT) — what is that office doing? i’m typing this on mobile and it’s already late evening, I hope it’s informative enough because … i have to be outdoors in gentle sun and wind tomorrow and every morning on my way to work.
