Lagman says he won’t give up House minority post

MANILA, Philippines—“I have the numbers.”

That was the response of Albay Representative Edcel Lagman to Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez, who has threatened to force a vote to oust Lagman as minority leader when lawmakers return to the House of Representatives on January 16.

“He (Suarez) is counting on the same people who have signed (a resolution) for my retention, and these people have remained steadfast,” Lagman told the Inquirer in an interview.

Lagman was referring to a House resolution signed by an “absolute majority” in the minority bloc before the Christmas break.

“I have an absolute majority. They all signed, siya wala naman pumipirma sa kanya, eh ano hawak niya? (no one has signed for him, so what does he have?)” he said.

Earlier, Lagman issued a press statement saying that Suarez must be using a “derelict abacus” in claiming that 19 of the 29 opposition congressmen were on his side and citing a term-sharing agreement made in July 2010.

Lagman  insisted that there was no  term-sharing agreement between him and Suarez for the post of House minority leader.

Lagman said those who were supporting him to keep his post simply wanted a “competent, credible and conscientious leadership” in the minority.

“Representative Danilo Suarez must not disparage and demean the imprimatur of his colleagues who not only express support for my leadership but collectively want me to continue leading the opposition,” Lagman said.

“Even granting that Suarez’s imagined term-sharing of the minority leadership existed, minority members can overturn such an agreement, which is not binding on them,” he stressed.

As for Suarez’s challenge that he stop dragging former President Gloria Macagapagal-Arroyo, now a representative of Pampanga’s second district, into the controversy, Lagman said it was Suarez who actually unnecessarily implicated the former leader.

“Siya ang sumasama kay presidente, (he’s the one dragging the president into this) for help. Ginawa pa niyang  headquarters  yong ospital  (He even turned the hospital into his headquarters),” Lagman said, referring to the hospital  suite where Arroyo is currently detained awaiting trial on various cases.

Lagman said that Arroyo last Wednesday night called Suarez and several other members of her party Kampi to an emergency meeting in her hospital suite at Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC), where she is under hospital arrest for election offenses, to discuss the plot to oust him.

Lagman said that while he supported Arroyo when she was still president and later Pampanga representative, he was never “a GMA stooge and does not succumb to her bidding.”

“It should be Suarez who must stop involving former President Arroyo in his struggle and should not use her hospital suite as his campaign headquarters,” Lagman said.

“Suarez must wean himself from the former president and desist from running to her for help,” he added.

Some lawmakers again paid the former president a visit at the VMMC on Friday.

A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said that at least 10 congressmen were in the presidential suite. The source did not say what was discussed.

“The congressmen arrived separately but caught up with each other at the suite,” the informant added. The source did not name the former president’s visitors.

The source claimed that Arroyo’s son, Ang Galing Pinoy party-list Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, was also there.

The visit came after Suarez said he would seek a vote on the leadership of the minority bloc when Congress reopens.

With a report from Julie M. Aurelio, Philippine Daily Inquirer