‘Speakership race now a free-for-all’

MANILA, Philippines — The speakership race will be a bruising fight among several supporters of President Duterte, a senior party-list lawmaker said yesterday.

“The race is now a wide open free-for-all with the President’s commitment that he would not meddle in the election of speaker,” Rep. Mikee Romero of party-list 1-Pacman said.

He added that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has repeatedly stated that she would not endorse any aspirant.

“In this free-for-all contest, we could be the swing vote,” Romero said, referring to the 54-member Party-List Coalition, of which he is president.

The coalition is the second biggest group in the House after the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) party, which claims to have won at least 80 seats.

Romero urged the aspirants not to offer money to their colleagues in exchange for their votes.

“We are not for sale. These reports of millions changing hands in connection with the speakership race are insulting to House members and damaging the institution,” he said.

Former speaker Pantaleon Alvarez earlier claimed that one aspirant was offering P500,000 while another was dangling P1 million for a vote.

When challenged by Minority Leader Danilo Suarez to prove his allegation, Alvarez, who wants to be speaker again, said none of his colleagues would admit offering or receiving money.

Meanwhile, four candidates for the top House post met with the President in Tokyo. They are reelected Reps. Lord Allan Velasco of Marinduque and Aurelio Gonzales Jr. of Pampanga and incoming Reps. Martin Romualdez of Leyte and Alan Peter Cayetano of Taguig.

Velasco, Gonzales and Alvarez belong to the ruling PDP-Laban party. Romualdez is president of Lakas-CMD, while Cayetano is a Nacionalista Party member.

Two weeks ago, PDP-Laban decided to have a process of selecting who among Velasco, Gonzales and Alvarez would be its candidate for speaker.

Gonzales said he would respect the result of the selection process.

In the face of a looming free-for-all among administration supporters, an opposition House member warned his colleagues that big businessmen could
meddle in the election of speaker.

“The influence of billionaire power brokers will come into play if the President does not endorse a candidate for speaker, officially or unofficially. We all know that the major political parties are associated with moneyed powerbrokers,” the lawmaker, who did not want to be named, said.

Another opposition lawmaker, Rep. Edcel Lagman of Albay, urged administration allies to field a common candidate.

Lagman said a lone candidate from the ranks of Duterte supporters “would foreclose the eventuality of a losing administration aspirant becoming the majority’s minority leader, an aberration which happened in the 17th Congress.”

He maintained that a genuine minority leader should not be a member or partisan of any group allied with the administration and should not be handpicked by the majority.

During the election of speaker in July 2016, when the outgoing Congress convened, Alvarez won the vote, with Ifugao’s Rep. Teodoro Baguilat Jr. placing second and Suarez in third place.

By tradition, the speakership aspirant receiving the second highest number of votes becomes the minority leader.

But the smaller Suarez group became larger than the Baguilat-Lagman bloc, with some defectors from the majority joining the Quezon representative. The Alvarez-led majority later decided to recognize Suarez as minority leader.

The Lagman-Baguilat group questioned the recognition before the Supreme Court (SC), which upheld the majority decision after two years.

When Alvarez was ousted and former president and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was elected Speaker in July last year, the majority continued to recognize Suarez as minority leader.

The group of Alvarez and former majority leader Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas brought the matter to the SC, where it is still pending.