PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte will call a caucus to unite factions within his PDP-Laban, his top aide, Special Assistant to the President Christopher Go, said Sunday.
On Friday, a breakaway faction held an unauthorized assembly to elect Rogelio Garcia as president, Abbin Dalhani as executive vice president, Willy Talag as secretary-general and Go as auditor.
“It was only yesterday that I learned of the faction,” Go said. “When they asked me about the assembly and [told me] I was chosen [as the auditor], I told them that I was already the interim national auditor, but this time around this [was] another faction.”
The breakaway group maintained Duterte as chairman.
“I mentioned this to the President. I said, ‘Mayor there are factions in this. You are chairman in this faction and chairman in the other. I, too, am auditor in this faction and auditor in the other faction’,” Go said.
He said the President was taken by surprise at the development.
The group removed Senator Aquilino Pimentel III as party president and Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez as secretary-general, but the established party leaders dismissed the move as an unauthorized action by rogue or expelled members.
“This is the party that took the President to the presidency, so it would be a pity if we don’t do anything about it,” Go said of the rift within the PDP-Laban.
Pimentel on Sunday warned against saboteurs who were out to sow havoc and destroy the ruling PDP-Laban.
“Once they succeed in their plot, they will jump [ship],” said Pimentel who noted that he spent his political life in the party founded by his father, former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel II.
The younger Pimentel said PDP-Laban is the only party for him and he has been a member for the last 36 years.
He likened the party’s saboteurs to a businessman who buys a brand name of another business only to kill it.
“We should be wary of this kind—those who just joined the party [PDP-Laban] and then, we do not know the motive… now, they’re so influential, they will mimic the goals of the party, and then, they do not care if the party will be destroyed. So we should closely watch these politicians,” Pimenel said.
The senator also called on their legitimate members to think about the best interest of the party and minimize the drama and side show. He also noted that majority of those sabotaging the party are non-members and others are not high-ranking officers,
“We are not affected. We will just proceed with our preparations for 2019, federalism will proceed and the development of political maturity will continue. Just look at the programs of the government and not politics,” he further stated
He emphasized that his ouster as party president last Friday during a gathering in Quezon City was the work of “rogue members.”
PDP-Laban information committee officer, Ronnie Munsayac, said the rogue members would be dealt with in accordance with party rules.
“We have already expelled some of them and after a thorough investigation will expel a few more,” he said. He said there is no need to expel the others because they aren’t legitimate party members.
“Because there is a process in joining the party and many of them failed to complete the process,” he said.
He said anyone can go to the Commission on Elections and see that Duterte is the chairman, Al Cusi is vice chairman, Pimentel is president, and Alvarez, the secretary-general of the PDP-Laban.
But Garcia said his group had opposed Pimentel and Alvarez’s move to swear in some 300,000 PDP-Laban members across the country in recent months, without going through seminars on the party’s goals, said Garcia.
“That’s what the traditional political parties do. People will join a party even though they don’t understand the party goals. That is why PDP-Laban was established—to discipline and correct the mistakes of the past,” Garcia said in Filipino on radio dzMM.
Garcia said he has been a PDP-Laban member since 1982. Duterte appointed him as director of the Development Bank of the Philippines last year, he said.
Garcia also said he tried to air his faction’s concerns but Pimentel snubbed his requests for a meeting.
He also denied Pimentel’s contention that many of those at the assembly were members who had been expelled.
“I dare them to show us that letter of expulsion,” he said.
He also said Pimentel had never been elected to the position, having taken over from former vice president Jejomar Binay when he quit the party in 2007.
The senator, he added, never called for a national assembly to confirm his presidency.