Milagros Aquino-Magsaysay (foreground, second from right) and Francisco Datol Jr. (left) take their oaths as Senior Citizens party-list representatives at the House of Representatives plenary.
Two party-list representatives of the Coalition of Associations of Senior Citizens in the Philippines finally took their oath as official members of the 17th Congress after the House of Representatives opened its second regular session on Monday.
Milagros Aquino-Magsaysay and Francisco Datol Jr. took their oaths as Senior Citizens party-list representatives at the House of Representatives plenary.
The oath-taking took effect after years of infighting that prevented the Senior Citizens party-list from occupying its seats.
With the addition of Aquino-Magsaysay and Datol, the number of sitting representatives in the House rises to 293.
“Finally, we now have a voice for the senior citizens of the whole Philippines. Before, [the party-list group] won, but it was only now resolved,” Datol told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an interview.
He said the party-list group will join the administration-led supermajority: “The 10.5 million senior citizens will support all of [President Rodrigo Duterte’s] projects.”
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez administered the oath of the two neophyte lawmakers.
Despite winning two seats in the 2016 elections, the senior citizen representatives are assuming their seats only now after infighting in the party-list group erupted between two sets of nominees.
READ: Cancel registration of seniors’ party-list, Comelec urged
Datol said his party-list was finally able to occupy its seats after the Commission on Elections ruled in May to consider his faction the group’s legitimate nominees.
His first order of business would be to file a bill creating the National Senior Citizens’ Commission, which would allot one percent of each local government unit’s funds to an agency that would do away with the elderly’s need to seek financial assistance and be beholden to local officials.
“They will no longer have to go through the mayors and [barangay] captains. The senior citizens will no longer be politicized,” Datol said.
The senior citizens’ group was not allowed to gain seats in the House during the 16th Congress for having two sets of party-list nominees.
The legitimacy of Datol and Aquino-Magsaysay’s faction was contested by the group led by Godofredo Arquiza, who represented the party-list in the 14th and 15th Congresses.
Besides the Comelec’s ruling in favor of Datol’s group, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 22 also sentenced Arquiza to at least four months’ imprisonment for libel in May. CBB / JPV