Sen. Robinhood Padilla (File photo from the Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Robinhood Padilla didn’t feel alluded to by former Sen. Franklin Drilon who remarked on Friday last week about a “lack of decorum” in the current Senate roster of the 19th Congress, without singling out anyone.
On Saturday, Padilla, one of the new Senate members, fired back at Drilon, saying that the senators were taking their jobs seriously even though they had inherited a grave problem. He added that lawmakers of the 19th Congress were not trying to be funny as the problems required immediate solutions.
“No, I felt nothing like that [being alluded to]. It’s just that I felt hurt for Mr. President [Juan Miguel] Migz Zubiri and for Majority Leader Joel Villanueva. I felt hurt for them. As for me, I don’t remember being noisy in the back row. Even if I was sitting there, I didn’t make any noise,” Padilla, speaking in Filipino, told reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the necrological service for former Sen. Rodolfo Biazon.
“Secondly, I have not cursed anyone inside the session hall or during my hearings. For me [I responded to Drilon] as someone under the leadership of Sen. Migz Zubiri, I felt obliged to defend him. It would not look good if the Senate President would defend himself,” Padilla added.
Padilla explained that he felt hurt by the criticism because Drilon made it despite the many things that the Senate had achieved.
“I have seen what the president, Sen. Migz Zubiri, has been doing so that we will have we call rapport inside the Senate,” he said.
“I don’t think we can say that things aren’t running well in the Senate — not if we have thought of several laws. For example, according to the report of the majority leader, Sen. Joel Villanueva, we are one of the Congresses that have passed so many laws. So that, I think, should be the basis [for comments],” he went on.
Drilon, a former Senate president himself, urged Zubiri to show displeasure at a seeming “lack of decorum” during Senate sessions and committee hearings, saying that he should move against what he perceived as an erosion of the legislative body’s prestige.
Drilon, whose last stint in the Senate was during the 18th Congress, was referring to noises heard while proceedings were in progress.
Earlier, Vicente Sotto III, another former Senate president, said that new senators should just take Drilon’s criticism in stride and welcome it — as his batch of lawmakers did when they were neophyte lawmakers.