4 more Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo allies join majority

Four allies of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have jumped over to the majority coalition, leaving the minority bloc with only 26 members, or less than 10 percent of the 285-strong House of Representatives.

Three of the lawmakers, who bolted Arroyo’s Lakas-Kampi-Christian Muslim Democrats, were Assistant Minority Leader and Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales Jr., and Pangasinan Representatives Leopoldo N. Bataoil and Jesus Celeste.

Gonzales joined the Nationalist People’s Coalition while Bataoil and Celeste moved over to the National Unity Party, both of which are part of the majority bloc led by President Aquino’s Liberal Party.

Another Lakas-Kampi member, La Union Rep. Victor Francisco Ortega, has joined the majority bloc but has remained with Arroyo’s party.

Ortega was recently appointed chair of the committee on interparliamentary relations. Ortega said that as far as he knew, Lakas-Kampi had no complaints about his joining the majority bloc while remaining with the party.

Favorite contractor

Gonzales was one of Arroyo’s closest associates, said to have been one of her favorite contractors during her term. Bataoil was a police general during the Arroyo administration. Celeste belongs to a powerful political family in Pangasinan.

Their departure has left the minority bloc with 26 members—including allied party-list representatives.

Pork barrel diplomacy

Quezon Rep. and Lakas-Kampi stalwart Danilo Suarez said the four were apparently won over by the “pork barrel diplomacy” being implemented by the LP through Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who has been widely criticized for holding back releases of the P70 million priority development assistance fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, of congressmen.

Suarez noted that the majority had even delayed the release of the pork barrel of members of their own bloc, apparently as a penalty for their refusal to vote along the House leadership’s lines, such as for the impeachment of former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and the postponement of the elections in Muslim Mindanao.

Minority Leader Edcel Lagman bemoaned what he called the administration’s “divide and rule” strategy in raiding the ranks of the minority by withholding the pork barrel of hard-core Arroyo loyalists or releasing part of the PDAF only for soft projects, such as the education and health projects of the minority congressmen.