Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta Party-list Rep. Jericho Nograles said Friday played down the alleged ouster move against Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano.
Nograles also said that a coup plot against Cayetano does not make any sense especially when Marinduque Rep. Lord Alan Velasco, whom he tagged as the one behind moves to unseat him, is only a few months away from taking over the leadership as part of a term-sharing agreement brokered by President Duterte as coalition party leader.
Nograles added that House members will not support any move to break the term-sharing agreement between Cayetano and Velasco because this would be in defiance to President Duterte’s position.
“The members of Congress are generally expecting a change of leadership [because that was the agreement brokered by the President between Cayetano and Velasco],” he added.
Deputy Speaker and Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte took the cudgels up Cayetano.
He said Velasco’s assurance that he would honor the term-sharing agreement should not be taken at face value.
“It does not make sense for any sane person to take Rep. Lord Velasco at his word, given that he now swears to high heavens that he did not mastermind the failed coup against Speaker Alan Cayetano, even if 20-plus House members have separately told us that they had been offered by Rep. Velasco himself with committee chairmanships and extra-budgetary allocations in our chamber in exchange for supporting his assumption as Speaker ahead of the 1521 term-sharing leadership change later this year,” Villafuerte said. Maricel V. Cruz
“That he is not man enough to take responsibility for his pathetic action after its failure speaks volumes of the flawed character and lack of credibility of Rep. Velasco who, in the first place, is bereft of the gravitas, track record and experience in public office to replace Speaker Alan at the helm of the bigger chamber,” Villafuerte added.
Meanwhile, Nograles said that it would be best for both Cayetano and Velasco to set aside all these loose talks about the alleged coup and show to all Filipinos that they are united in trying to pass legislations that would benefit the whole nation.
He said that Congress has a lot better things to do than waste its time on plotting to unseat the speaker especially now that the entire nation is burdened with a lot of challenges, ranging from the series of earthquakes that jolted Mindanao, the Taal Volcano eruption and now the looming Covid-19 pandemic.
Nograles said that aside from the fact that it would be against logic for Velasco to be plotting a coup against Cayetano, it is also not easy to get the numbers in the House of Representatives to unseat a speaker.
Nograles added that any attempt to unseat a Speaker under the present Constitution will not fly unless it has the support of the president as he cited various instances where a coup had succeeded including that of his father former Speaker Prospero Nograles.