House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC
Thanks, but no thanks.
Minority Leader and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman on Monday dismissed speculation that he was joining the majority coalition what with the ongoing intramurals in the minority bloc in the House of Representatives.
“I am not applying with the majority and I am not bolting the minority for membership in the majority,” Lagman told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
He said he was determined to continue providing the minority with a “competent, credible and conscientious stewardship,” and was prepared to prove that he had the mandate of an “absolute majority” in the minority bloc when sessions resume on Jan. 16.
Lagman thanked Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II and ranking members of the Liberal Party like Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo and Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone for saying he was welcome in the administration coalition should he decide to leave the minority.
Lagman said he still had overriding policy differences with the administration, some of which were pending in the Supreme Court.
“I cannot forsake conscience and conviction in favor of partisan considerations and concessions,” Lagman said.
Lagman is locked in a battle for the House minority leadership with Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez who challenged Lagman’s continued hold on the post despite what the latter claimed was a “term-sharing” agreement they forged in July 2010.
But Lagman denied there was such an agreement.
Lagman also said that an “absolute majority” in the minority actually affixed their signatures on a manifesto in December 2010 expressing their desire that he continue as minority leader.
Orders of Arroyo
He accused Suarez of plotting his ouster, supposedly on orders of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now a representative of Pampanga.
Suarez said the manifesto that the Albay congressman was referring to was only in recognition of Lagman’s successful stewardship of the minority bloc but it did not give him the privilege and authority to extend his term beyond what was agreed upon.
He insisted he had the support of 19 of 29 minority members who wanted Lagman to honor the term-sharing agreement and turn over the post of House minority leader.
“I am not a power-grabber. I will not seek something which does not rightfully belong to me. We just have to honor what had been agreed upon,” Suarez said.
‘Bound to happen’
Reacting to the squabble in the minority, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. said it was bound to happen considering the string of charges filed against Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo.
“It creates an opportunity for a legitimate and credible opposition to emerge,” said Abad.
The opposition is doomed if it will bet its fortunes on the “discredited and deadweight” former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said Abad, a Liberal Party stalwart, who cheered efforts by the remnants of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats led by Lagman to wean itself away from Arroyo.
“It can go either way: In one positive direction, where the minority can begin to define itself philosophically distinct or even opposed to the values and presuppositions that characterize the Aquino administration, or in another, where the opposition continues to hitch its wagon to the fate of the discredited and deadweight Arroyo,” said Abad.
Lagman had declared that the minority bloc was now represented by Lakas-CMD and not by Lakas-Kampi after most members of Kampi, the original political party of Arroyo, abandoned the merged entity to form the National Unity Party last year.
FVR confirms split
In Lingayen, Pangasinan, former President Fidel V. Ramos, founder of Lakas-CMD, on Monday confirmed Lagman’s pronouncement that the alliance between Lakas-CMD and Kampi had ceased to exist.
He said the merger in 2009 had not prospered “when it became one person’s party.”
“I said that three years ago, when the bigger Lakas was supposed to be merged [with Kampi] on orders of somebody,” Ramos told reporters here on the sidelines of the 67th anniversary of the Lingayen Gulf landings.
Ramos said he rejected the Lakas-Kampi merger in 2009. With reports from Gabriel Cardinoza and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon