Bongbong announces support for Villar bid for Senate presidency

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. yesterday said that he would support defeated Nacionalista Party (NP) presidential candidate Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. in his bid for the Senate presidency.

Marcos said Sen. Teofisto Guingona III invited him for a meeting with members of the Liberal Party (LP), but he will not leave Villar’s NP at this time.

Guingona approached him during the last session day at the House of Representatives last month, and Marcos has not heard from him since then.

Marcos is originally a member of the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan but ran and won as a guest candidate of NP in the May 10 elections.

“I am fairly well committed to the NP group of Manny Villar. I have signed a resolution. It’s an actual resolution. It says ‘that the undersigned will support Sen. Manny Villar for Senate president.’ It was something new for me because in the House (of Representatives), we don’t have written resolutions for this, we just vote on the floor so this is something different,” Marcos said, adding that he signed the resolution about 10 days after the May elections.

“I suppose you could say that it’s my loyalty to the party (NP) that got me elected to the Senate. Senator Manny helped me a lot during the campaign. The party was very important to my success. So, I think it’s probably a good idea to stay with the successful group. I’ve never been comfortable about patalon-talon (jumping ship), pabago-bago. It would be in the interest of loyalty, propriety and consistency that I stayed with the NP,” Marcos said.

Marcos said he had also talked with Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile about certain issues but they merely discussed committee chairmanships in the Senate. 

Reacting to reports that Enrile might be retained as Senate president if nobody among the contenders is able to muster the majority 13 votes, Marcos said everything remains a possibility.

“It is entirely possible that there will be a stalemate and that the compromise candidate will be the present Senate president. As I said, the other senators are not committing yet publicly,” he said. 

Aside from Marcos, Villar’s allies include Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Loren Legarda, Alan and Pia Cayetano, and Joker Arroyo.

The bloc of Sen. Edgardo Angara that also includes Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri, Gregorio Honasan, Vicente Sotto III, Ramon Revilla Jr., and Lito Lapid could be a swing vote for either Villar or the LP contender for Senate president, Sen. Francis Pangilinan.

Pangilinan gets Enrile’s support

Pangilinan said he has consulted Enrile, who has “committed” to help support the LP candidate in the Senate presidency. 

“He (Enrile) remained firm that he will not side with the NP,” said Pangilinan after emerging from a meeting with Enrile at the Senate President’s office in Pasay City.

Pangilinan’s visit came a few days after lawyer Emma Lirio Reyes of the Senate Secretariat said that Enrile remains as Senate president in a holdover capacity until he is replaced during the opening day of the 15th Congress on July 26.

Reyes said it has been a practice that an incumbent Senate president remains in the post in a holdover capacity after a national election that is followed by the opening of a new Congress. The Senate president is retained, even if his term presumably ends on June 30 side by side with the end of a president’s term.

Pangilinan said they both reiterated that there is a need to work for unity at the Senate and set aside personal ambitions to be able to push forward the interest of the Filipino people and the legislative agenda of President Aquino.

“We should set aside partisan politics, and move to gather the 13 votes,” said Pangilinan, who has been reaching out to other senators to get their support. Pangilinan, who claims to have gotten the support of nine of his colleagues, is on the third wave of talks with his colleagues.