PILI, CAMARINES SUR—With still over a year until the next elections, Governor Luis Raymund “LRay” Villafuerte has started stirring the political pot in Camarines Sur by declaring he would be challenging Representative Diosdado “Dato” Ignacio Arroyo for the second district congressional seat in the province.
Villafuerte announced to reporters his intention to go head to head with Arroyo and revealed that he had in fact just registered as resident of Libmanan town in the barangay (village) just next to where Arroyo built a house in a 12-hectare property.
Arroyo disclosed that his registration record at the Commission on Elections has been transferred from Cadlan, Pili, to Libmanan’s Barangay Bahay, which adjoins the village of Potot where Arroyo established residence since 2005.
‘Miserable’
“I am declaring now that I will run as congressman in the second district (of Camarines Sur). So Dato Arroyo, wake up and visit your district because your district is miserable,” Villafuerte said here on Thursday.
Villafuerte is in his last consecutive term as governor, having won landslide victories in the gubernatorial races in 2004, 2007 and 2010.
Arroyo, in a phone interview on Saturday, said he would leave it to the people of the district to decide their fate in the May 2013 elections.
Arroyo, who had been open about his intention to seek another term in the district, said he continued to implement projects in his district through other sources even though the Aquino administration has yet to give him a share of the development fund for the district.
Villafuerte said he chose to run in the second district because Arroyo’s district has become “miserable” after Congress decided to create a third district from the combined 20 towns that used to be part of the first and second districts.
Alluding to his position against the proposal to divide the province into two, Villafuerte said district division did not bring progress to a locality.
Controversial
The controversial creation of one more district for Camarines Sur was signed into law as Republic Act No. 9716 on Oct. 26, 2009, by former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Dato’s mother.
President Aquino, then a senator, questioned as unconstitutional before the Supreme Court the passage of RA 9716, which was included in the discussion of the grounds for impeachment against Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“It was widely believed and confirmed by subsequent events that the districts were redefined and created to assure that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s son, Dato Arroyo, could run and win in the newly created district to avoid a contest between the president’s son and DBM (Department of Budget and Management) Secretary Rolando Andaya who wanted to return to Camarines Sur to run in his old district. This new district was upheld contrary to the requirement that mandates a minimum of [250,000] for the creation of a legislative district,” article 1.11 of the articles of impeachment against Corona read in part. (The prosecution in the impeachment hearing has dropped this article from the grounds of impeachment against Corona.)
Andaya was once the representative of the old first district of Camarines Sur comprising the towns of Ragay, Del Gallego, Lupi, Sipocot, Cabusao, Libmanan, Milaor, Minalabac, Pamplona and San Fernando. He was appointed in 2006 as budget secretary by Ms. Arroyo and stayed on until the start of election period of 2010, when he filed his candidacy for representative of the new first district under RA 9716.
New second district
From 10 towns, Andaya’s area of jurisdiction was reduced to five towns, which include his hometown Ragay and Del Gallego, Lupi, Sipocot and Cabusao at his coming back as representative of the new first district.
The new second district of Camarines Sur, in the second term of Arroyo as representative, was reduced to seven towns (Libmanan, Pasacao, Pamplona, San Fernando and Minalabac of the old first district; and Milaor and Gainza, from the old second district under Rep. Luis R. Villafuerte, father of the incumbent governor and main author of the bill that apportioned the two districts into three).