Ron Salo and Ciriaco Calalang. Photo sourced from Salo’s Twitter account.
Who would take the House of Representatives seat that incoming presidential spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. would soon leave?
Roque claimed on Sunday that lawyer Ciriaco Calalang, the next nominee in the line of succession, cannot replace him because as representative of Kabayan party-list group.
In a statement, Roque said 52 voting members of the group held a Party Congress on Oct. 28 and pronounced that “the nominees submitted by Mr. Ron Salo’s group… are not recognized.”
The names of Calalang, Paul Hernandez and Joshua Sebastian were previously submitted to the Commission on Elections as the group’s third, fourth and fifth nominees.
Roque added that the “legitimate members of Kabayan” would submit a new list of nominees which would produce the replacement he would likely recognize.
He claimed that Sebastian was “impeached and expelled during the Special Party Congress” on Feb. 11 this year, while Calalang and Hernandez were never members of the group because they allegedly id not go through the process of nomination and acceptance.
He added that the nominations came from the “fake Board of Trustees” organized by Salo “without warrant by the Party Congress.”
Roque also brought up the Supreme Court’s 2013 disciplinary ruling which suspended Calalang from practicing law for two years and permanently disqualified him from acting as notary public for notarizing a deed by “ghost” land sellers.
Salo had in the past week announced that Calalang would take Roque’s seat. In a Twitter post on Sunday, he said the transfer of the seat to Calalang was “automatic” under Section 16 of the Party-list Law.
“Aside from saying Atty. Calalang is a law professor at Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU), tax consultant, and a Certified Public Accountant, Ron Salo should have also announced that Calalang has superhuman powers as he apparently can raise people from the dead,” Roque quipped.
Sought for comment, Salo told the Inquirer in a text message that the Party Congress touted by Roque “is illegal and is not sanctioned by Kabayan Party-list Constitution.”
He claimed the group’s 2015 constitution provided for an annual general assembly every April in lieu of a party congress, adding that the persons behind the party congress were mostly “expelled members of Kabayan Partylist just like Mr. Roque.”
“We’re just really wondering why Roque’s is so interested with the Kabayan Party-list seat when he is now a Presidential Spokesperson,” Salo said. “He appears to be so attached with the Kabayan Party-list seat in Congress. He is hell-bent in ‘appropriating’ Kabayan Party-list for himself.”
As the first and second nominees, Roque and Salo occupied the two seats won by the group in the May 2016 elections, but the two have bickered since December after a “board of trustees” backed by the latter began investigating Roque for his sexually-charged inquiry into the love life of Senator Leila de Lima.
In turn, Roque brought up Salo’s alleged involvement in the controversial P3.8-billion license plate deal under the Aquino administration, as corporate secretary of the supplier.
Salo said the “board of trustees” expelled Roque from the party-list group in January, while Roque said the “party congress” ousted Salo in February.