Term sharing eyed for Drilon, Villar

Allies of President Arroyo in the Senate are eyeing a term-sharing arrangement between Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., who has launched a quest for the chamber’s top post, the third highest in the land after the presidency and the vice presidency.

"That formula worked before; it should work now," Sen. Ralph Recto said yesterday.

He was referring to the same arrangement agreed upon by Drilon and the late Sen. Renato Cayetano, who would have headed the Senate for one and a half years until last June 30 had he not succumbed to liver cancer in June 2003.

Recto said he and other senators belonging to the majority expect Drilon and Villar to agree to a term sharing to avoid a potentially contentious, divisive and acrimonious fight for the top post that Drilon now occupies.

With such an agreement, Mrs. Arroyo’s allies would likely keep major Senate committees, he said.

Recto heads the committee on ways and means, the panel that scrutinizes tax proposals. He belongs to the so-called Wednesday Group that includes Villar, Sen. Francis Pangilinan, Sen. Joker Arroyo, and former senator and now Vice President Noli de Castro.

In a showdown between Drilon and Villar, Recto and Arroyo are expected to vote for their Wednesday Group colleague.

Pangilinan, who is now majority leader and a Liberal Party mate of Drilon, who is party chairman, would face a big dilemma, a situation he could avoid if the two contenders agree to share the remaining three-year term.

Under a term-sharing arrangement, Drilon is expected to continue heading the Senate for the next one and a half years. Villar would then inherit the top post until he runs for re-election in 2007, assuming that the present system of government still exists.

Mrs. Arroyo has a commanding 14-member majority in the Senate. The opposition has nine members and is fragmented. Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who ran in the May presidential elections as an independent opposition candidate, has repeatedly made known his intention not to join any Senate group that includes his bitter critic and former party boss, Sen. Edgardo Angara.

Angara, who heads the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) to which Lacson belonged, had dropped his party mate in the search for a presidential candidate in favor of popular movie actor Fernando Poe Jr.

Lacson and his supporters, including Makati Rep. Agapito Aguino, quit the LDP shortly after the elections. Aquino was party secretary-general until he resigned.

Whoever heads the Senate, the practice started by Drilon of giving minor committee chairmanships to members of the minority is expected to continue.