Alvarez: Bring it on

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

A coup for the House speakership? Bring it on.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said on Friday he was prepared to face any attempt to seize the top House post from him by lawmakers disgruntled over his hard-line stance on the death penalty bill.

“It’s OK for me to face a coup because what use is my being Speaker if I’m not able to help our President?” he said.

Alvarez, a bosom buddy of President Duterte, said his strong and uncompromising push for the bill restoring the capital punishment for heinous crimes was not a directive from the Chief Executive.

“It’s my own initiative,” he said in a text message.

On Wednesday, the Davao del Norte congressman asked his colleagues in the Duterte-controlled supermajority, especially the deputy speakers and committee chairs, to toe the line or lose their plum positions.

He said former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who had expressed her opposition to the death penalty, was among those who would be replaced if she voted against the measure. Of the 14 deputy speakers, one other person has publicly spoken out against the bill—Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya.