Deputy Speaker Paolo
Duterte yesterday confirmed that he has threatened to have the Speaker’s post
declared vacant today after Negros Oriental Rep. Arnulfo Teves last week
questioned the huge infrastructure allocations given to Camarines Sur and
Taguig City under the P4.5 trillion proposed national budget for 2021.
“The text message that
I sent to another lawmaker — and is now making the rounds — was an expression
of my personal dismay upon hearing the concerns of my fellow lawmakers. It was
the same message that I sent after one Congressman from the Visayas bloc
dragged my name into the issue even after I have already strongly made myself
clear over this issue,” Duterte said in a statement.
The President’s son was referring to the text message he sent to his close ally, ACTS-CIS party-list Rep. Eric Yap, chair of the House committee on appropriations, who earlier defended the allocations given to Taguig, the city represented by Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and his wife Rep. Lani Cayetano.
In that text message
last Friday, the deputy speaker told Yap that he did not want to get involved
and had kept silent because the Speaker’s camp has not been speaking to him anymore.
Paolo, however, said
he would move to declare the positions of the speaker and the deputy speakers
vacant during the plenary session “so that Mindanao won’t die for lack of
budget.”
The issue stemmed from Teves’ move to question the P8 billion public works
allocation given to Taguig and P11.8 billion to Camarines Sur during the budget
briefing of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) on its proposed
P667.3 billion budget for 2021.
Teves act was not
taken good-naturedly by some of his colleagues. The issue has gotten out of
hand and has even reached the House members’ Viber thread where Teves and
deputy speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte of Camarines Sur exchanged insults,
which ended up with Teves calling Villafuerte a “faggot.”
Retorting, Villafuerte
claimed Teves was being used by Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco and former
Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez to sabotage the swift passage of the
2021 budget before Velasco takes the helm from Cayetano next month based on
their term-sharing agreement.
Threatening Cayetano
with a “coup” is not new to the younger Duterte, who also did the same thing
before the 18th Congress elected Cayetano as Speaker in July last year. In the
end, however, no coup was even attempted on the floor and Duterte ended up
accepting the post of deputy speaker along with other administration allies.
Duterte, in his
statement, said: “Congress continues to be hounded by the issue of budget —
something that finds its way up to the current House leadership, how it treats
its members, how it approves allocations and budgets with fairness or lack of
it.”
While he claims that
he does not want to get involved, the President’s son said he wishes to “help
my fellow lawmakers find answers to their questions or remedies to the budget
that they proposed for their people.”
“As a collective body,
the members of Congress have the power to change the course of which the
leadership is leading them to and address a problem to ensure that the programs
and projects for their people are delivered and delivered expeditiously. The members
of Congress have the power to correct everything that they perceive as wrong
happening within the Lower House or change leadership as they demand fair
treatment and reforms,” he said.
‘LANDSLIDE’
Cavite Rep. Elpidio
Barzaga Jr., president of the National Unity Party (NUP) which is the second
biggest political party at the House, said Cayetano would still win by a
“landslide” if the President would just leave the issue to lawmakers and allow
them to choose their leader.
“Kung sakaling
sasabihin ng Pangulo or from his body language, wala siyang direktiba sa aming
mga kinatawan na magpalit ng speakership, at kung sasabihin niya magkaroon kayo
ng botohan, sa tingin ko (if the President would say that he has no directive
for us to change our leadership or from his body language, I think) it will be
a landslide win on the part of Alan Peter Cayetano,” he told dzBB.
Barzaga said scrapping
the term-sharing agreement will benefit the House so that there will be
continuity of the good coordination between the Executive and the Legislative,
especially amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
If the term-sharing
agreement pushes through and Velasco is elected, he said the new speaker should
be able to unite all blocs, including Cayetano supporters.
“Kinakailangan niyang
ma-unite lahat ng mga kinatawan para sa ganoon maipagpatuloy naman niya kung
anu-ano ang mga batas na dapat naming ibalangkas at maaprubahan sa Kongreso (He
should be able to unite all blocs to ensure the speedy passage of our proposed
bills),” he said.
This article first appeared in Malaya.
