Sotto wary of ‘monkey wrench’ on road board abolition

MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III was wary of a “monkey wrench” that would be thrown at the proposed abolition of the Road Board.

On Monday, Sotto said he would call an all-senators caucus to decide, among other things, whether or not to they would agree to recall a bill proposing the road board’s abolition and tackle it in the bicameral conference committee.

“Do we agree? If we agree we have to come up with a mechanism in the Senate to be able to resume consideration and recall the adoption of the House version,” he said at a press conference in the Senate on Thursday.

“Medyo baka maging monkey wrench ‘yan,” the Senate leader said.

Sotto maintained that as far as the Senate is concerned, the corruption-ridden board is already abolished.

He explained that the bill had already been approved by the House of Representatives and was later adopted by the Senate even without convening the bicam.

But the House later recalled its approval of the measure.

“There are no disagreeing positions in other words, so there is no need for a bicam,” he said.

“If we go into a bicam that would mean that we will have to pass again a motion on the floor recalling our previous motion which was already approved.”

Sotto suspects the House probably wants to introduce amendments in its own version of the bill when the two chambers meet in the bicam.

“The problem is if it is not contained in the Senate version, and it is not contained in the original House version, we cannot legally take it up in the bicam. ‘Yun ang SOP, we cannot introduce anything new into the bicam,” he said.

Asked about the possibility that the House was stalling the approval of the bill, Sotto said, “Anything is possible.”

“It’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings,” he added. /kga