Miriam may chair foreign relations committee

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, who is straddling between the Senate majority and minority, may get to chair the chamber’s foreign relations committee.

The majority bloc led by Senate President Franklin Drilon is dangling the committee’s chairmanship on Santiago to keep her on the administration’s side.

Drilon and his colleagues are wooing his Iloilo provincemate even as she continues to criticize the perks and privileges members of the chamber get and the term-sharing agreement between the Senate boss and Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., holdover chairman of the foreign relations committee.

Yesterday, in a radio interview, she said committee chairmen receive as much as P2 million a month in budget for their panels, a large portion of which represents discretionary funds.

She said senators get only P41,000 each in monthly salary.

Santiago is reportedly eyeing the Blue Ribbon Committee, the foreign relations committee and the committee on constitutional amendments. In a caucus on Wednesday, members of the majority agreed to keep Sen. Joker Arroyo as chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee, the panel that investigates shenanigans in government.

Villar continues to head the finance committee, but the chairmanship of the foreign relations committee was left hanging.

The committee on constitutional amendments, which Santiago also wants to lead, is chaired in a holdover capacity by opposition Sen. Edgardo Angara.

In the fight for the Senate presidency between Drilon and now Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Santiago voted for Pimentel. By tradition, she should be part of Pimentel’s opposition bloc.

But according to Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan, she wants to be counted with the majority and has expressed her intention to attend future caucuses of the Drilon bloc provided she is given sufficient notice.

She was invited to Wednesday’s caucus but sent word that she had a prior engagement in Iloilo.

According to those in the know, there is bad blood between her and Drilon when it comes to Iloilo politics.

One neophyte senator who received a committee assignment on Wednesday is actor Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr., who will inherit the public works committee that his father headed in the last Congress.

Former senator Ramon Revilla Sr. has admitted that he asked Drilon to give the chairmanship of the public works committee to his son, the youngest among the 23 members of the Senate.

In an interview with journalists yesterday, Senator Revilla said it is his privilege to continue what his father had started in the area of public works.

He also said he favors a proposal by Santiago for senators to reveal all amounts they receive from the Senate every month in the interest of transparency.