House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano on Monday met with the at least 35 members of the ruling party Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) amid an alleged plot to oust him from his post.
The meeting did not include Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco, whom Cayetano accused of an ouster plot.
Velasco is set to succeed Cayetano in October under a term-sharing deal.
Cayetano shall serve as Speaker for the first 15 months before Velasco takes over in the last 21 months of the 18th Congress which ends in June 2022.
Some members of the House of Representatives, however, were pushing Cayetano to stay until 2022.
The 54-member Party-list Coalition in Congress backed Cayetano.
Velasco, for his part, denied any plan to remove the Speaker from his post ahead of time.
“Up to this day, I continue to honor the term-sharing agreement brokered by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte when the 18th Congress convened in July 2019. From the beginning, I never had any intention of reneging on this agreement. I am a man of honor,” Velasco earlier said.
Still, the Speaker challenged Velasco to guarantee that he would not replace the existing committee chairpersons should he take over.
The majority bloc voted to remove House committee on appropriations chairman Isidro Ungab with ACT-CIS party-list Rep. Eric Yap.
Oriental Mindoro Paulino Salvador Leachon was also stripped of his chairmanship at committee on electoral tribunal and was replaced by Kabayan Party-list Rep. Ron Salo.