Angara Jr. tries on pa’s office for size

Senator-elect Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara: Feng shui believer. INQUIRER.net file photo

MANILA, Philippines—Senator-elect Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara wants to take over his father’s office on the fifth floor of the Senate building even as he has yet to obtain the OK of the Senate leadership.

This has not prevented him, however, from planning to make changes to the office following the principles of feng shui.

“It has been a practice. Even in the House, I consulted a feng shui expert,” said Angara, who is leaving the House of Representatives as the congressman from Aurora province at the end of the month.

Angara came to the Senate building this week to look around before the next Congress steps in on June 30.

Reporters were able to interview the 40-year-old Angara in the near-empty office of his father, Sen. Edgardo Angara, who is bowing out as the longest-serving senator in the post-Edsa Congress, having sat in the chamber for four terms.

Boxes holding computers and books and art work in their wrapping littered the floor of Room 504. The new senator has yet to bring in his own furniture.

“We just parked our things here because my father is still the senator,” said the son.

Angara said he had made a request to be given his father’s office, but he had yet to receive an answer from those who make the room assignments.

As a neophyte, Angara said he was aware he would not likely get the chairmanship of the committee on education, for which he was aspiring, since this usually went to senior lawmakers or second-termers.

Reelected Sen. Francis Escudero has indicated his wish to head the same committee.

The other senators-elect who came to the Senate on Wednesday were Benigno Aquino IV and Nancy Binay.

Aquino was briefed on the administrative workings of the chamber, while Binay paid a courtesy call on acting Senate President Jinggoy Estrada before being given a tour of the Senate building.