While the Senate will resume its sessions with an impeachment trial, the House of Representatives will have its own show at the reopening of Congress next Monday: a showdown of two allies of former President and now Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the leadership of the minority.
Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez on Friday said he would seek a vote on the house minority leader post at the start of the plenary session, expecting at least 19 of the 29 members of the minority bloc to back him in his bid to oust the incumbent, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman.
“I really feel bad about him dragging the former President into what is supposed to be a quiet affair,” Suarez said in a phone interview. “If only he stood by our gentleman’s agreement. Since he started this, I have no choice but to stand up on the floor and challenge him by demanding a minority vote on our leader.”
The usually mild-mannered Lagman came out the other day with an accusatory statement, blaming Arroyo for supposedly plotting his ejection as minority leader during an emergency meeting on Wednesday night at Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City.
Lagman said the meeting at Arroyo’s hospital suite was attended by Suarez and several other members of Kampi, the original political party founded by Arroyo, which merged with Lakas-CMD just months before the 2010 elections.
Arroyo has been detained at the hospital since the Christmas holidays, charged with sabotaging the results of the 2007 senatorial elections to favor her administration’s candidates. She has denied the charge.
Lagman has claimed in a statement that “an absolute majority of the minority members” had signed a resolution to retain him as minority leader for his “responsible and credible stewardship of the minority.”
Suarez insisted that Lagman had known as early as mid-December that he and 19 other members of the minority bloc wanted Lagman to respect the term-sharing agreement the two of them reached in July 2010.
Suarez said that under that agreement, Lagman would yield to him as minority leader starting this year.
Suarez said term-sharing deals were common in Congress and he thought this would be as “trouble-free” as the others.
“I have already told my friends in Congress, the House leaders and the media that I would be the minority leader and I never heard anything from him until this week. This is really sad,” Suarez said.
He said he did not believe “insurbordination” by a member would have any ill-effects on the minority.
Suarez said that either he or Lagman would have to leave the minority bloc and he did not see himself leaving because he had 19 of the 29 votes of its members.
“I don’t think the party is big enough for the two of us. But I will not leave. He should, for dragging others,” Suarez said.
Stability needed
Suarez also said there had been talk that Lagman would join the majority, especially now that Arroyo had been placed under arrest.
Lagman did not reply to the Inquirer’s calls or text messages.
A member of the Lakas-Kampi coalition in Congress, who requested anonymity fearing coming out in the open might deepen the rift within the minority, confirmed there was a power-sharing agreement but that some members wanted Lagman to stay on to give their bloc stability in the face of the legal difficulties faced by its leader, Arroyo.
The same Lakas-Kampi source, however, said that Arroyo wanted to have “absolute loyalty” among her troops during “these trying times” and that she wanted Suarez at the helm based on his track record.
Writing on the wall
The same source said Lagman should have seen the “writing on the wall” during the long hospitalization of Arroyo before her arrest, where the Pampanga representative had been “cool” to him and preferred to surround herself with people politically closer to her, like Suarez.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said the Lagman-Suarez feud was not the concern of the House majority.
“It’s their business, they should settle it among themselves,” said Belmonte in a text message.
First posted 12:22 am | Saturday, January 7th, 2012