Senator Koko Pimentel III. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has expressed support for the incoming Senate leadership, and urged the lawmakers to work together in the 17th Congress, presumptive Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said on Tuesday.
Pimentel, president of the PDP-Laban, Duterte’s party, said he met with Duterte Monday night in Davao City and showed him the draft resolution signed by 14 senators that backed Pimentel as the Senate leader.
“He supports me as Senate President, and he appreciates the fact the majority was organized and the committees were assigned pursuant to principles and not transactions,” Pimentel said of Duterte in a phone interview.
Duterte agreed when informed that majority of the senators had decided to unite based on principles and not on expected trade-offs, said Pimentel, who added that committee chairmanships were based on the members’ expertise.
“So if we liken the Senate to a machine, it is an efficient machine,” he said.
Pimentel said any changes would be based on the Senate’s “collective decision.”
As for any differences he and Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano—who was Duterte’s running mate—may have, Pimentel laid them to rest.
“What he [Duterte] said was that Alan and I must be together,” he said. Cayetano had also aspired for the Senate leadership.
Pimentel earlier invited Cayetano to join the Senate majority.
Pimentel said he did not take much of Duterte’s time on Monday in deference to the long line of visitors waiting to meet with him. But in their brief 15-minute meeting, Duterte invited him and other senators to join him when he is briefed by security experts on the West Philippine Sea, Pimentel said.
Pimentel said he was also able to mention his desire for a tax reform package, which would be discussed at length at a future date.
While the Senate leadership appears to have been ironed out, outgoing Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said some Duterte allies wished to further reduce the Liberal Party (LP) members in the House of Representatives to only 20.
The figure is “way below” the membership of other political parties that have joined a coalition with Duterte’s PDP-Laban party, Belmonte said, adding that in such a scenario, “I cannot be a member of that group.”
The outgoing leader of the lower chamber said the LP, the country’s biggest political party before the May elections, had not yet formally signed any agreement with PDP-Laban to join the emerging majority coalition in the House.
More than 100 Liberals are poised to join the 17th Congress, which will consist of 297 House members, but a good number of them had defected to PDP-Laban in exchange for choice committee chairmanships or for a place in the majority.
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