OUTGOING Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. on Sunday urged incoming Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to treat his coalition partners fairly.
He said he initiated to establish a good relationship with the other lawmakers belonging to different parties under a coalition when the Liberal Party, his party, was then a marginalized political party in 2010.
“My principle then was to treat your allies fairly and equally, and give the recognition due them,” Belmonte said.
“That was my way of bonding with them rather than forcing them to join the party.”
Because of the recruitment of members from various parties into a super majority and the plan to reduce the LP membership to only 20, Belmonte hinted at campaigning to become the next minority leader in the 17th Congress.
A lawmaker who requested anonymity said President Rodrigo Duterte’s Partido Demokratiko Lakas ng Bayan was being alarmed by the massive recruitment being undertaken by its coalition partners in the supermajority.
“The PDP-Laban was disappointed with the continued recruitment of other parties from LP members, prompting the incoming ruling party to request them to stop the recruitment process,” the source said.
“The recruited members may be bigger in number than the PDP-Laban’s 80 lawmakers.”
PDP-Laban’s supermajority is also composed of the Nacionalista Party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the National Union Party and the 57 allied party-list groups.
The source said at least 54 or 55 NP members had joined the supermajority, adding if the PDP-Laban did not stop its recruitment, it could be outnumbered.
Meanwhile, defeated vice presidential candidate Senator Alan Peter Cayetano had only himself to blame for failing to get the support of his colleagues in his bid for the Senate presidency as he had resorted to disinformation, Senator-elect Panfilo Lacson told DWIZ radio.
Cayetano, who has not given up the fight on leading the Senate, was earlier accused by his fellow senators of “dictating” on the chairmanship of the Senate committees.
Lacson belied the claims that President Rodrigo Duterte had interfered in choosing the chairmanship of the Senate committees. Cayetano had repeatedly vowed he would not meddle in the senators’ choice of Drilon’s successor.
Duterte also announced he would remain neutral and even told Cayetano and Pimentel, both close allies, to fight it out for the Senate presidency.
But Lacson said he remembered Cayetano telling him he still needed to clear with the President the chairmanship of at least five committees.