Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III –EDWIN BACASMAS
As infighting threatened to divide the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), the party president, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, expressed openness to having the group’s chair, President Rodrigo Duterte, mediate between the two factions.
“If the President wants to talk about the party, which I have long requested him to do, and if this is the way for us to meet, then I will meet with him,” Pimentel said in a radio interview on Sunday.
But the PDP-Laban leader stressed that the issue was a “very little thing” that had been overblown by the media.
He insisted that the faction that elected new officers on Friday and replaced him and former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez had no authority to reorganize the party.
“Politics is addition. You cannot hijack the party. This is between the supporters of the President. We will allow the President [to mediate] because all of us are his supporters anyway,” Pimentel said in Filipino.
On Friday, the group of Willy Talag, chair of the PDP-Laban National Capital Region membership committee, led a “national assembly” that elected new officers of the party.
Talag was named secretary general, supposedly replacing Alvarez, while Rogelio Garcia was picked as the new president, replacing Pimentel.
Special Assistant to the President Christopher “Bong” Go was named auditor of the group but he did not attend.
‘Usurpers’
In a July 20 letter to party members, Pimentel, Alvarez and Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, PDP-Laban vice chair, said the Friday assembly had not been sanctioned by the party, describing the organizers as “usurpers.”
Pimentel said Garcia, who was named the new president during the assembly, was a “practicing lawyer in GenSan (General Santos City), who was once upon a time a member” of PDP-Laban.
The senator earlier said the organizers of the Friday assembly were either PDP-Laban members who had been expelled by the party for infractions or had never legitimately belonged to the party.
The move of the PDP-Laban faction came only days after the party secretary general, Alvarez, lost the House speakership to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now a Pampanga representative, in a squabble over leadership.
In May, Pimentel yielded the Senate presidency to Sen. Vicente Sotto III to prepare for his campaign for reelection next year.
In the radio interview, Pimentel said the movements in the House and Senate leadership had nothing to do with the turmoil within the party.
“That’s normal and can be expected to happen any time,” he said.
Pimentel assured the “legitimate” PDP-Laban members that the ruling party remained strong, asking them not to be affected and to continue preparations for the 2019 midterm elections. —DJ Yap