Cayetano allies get key posts in major House shake-up

With still months to go before the scheduled turnover of the speakership in the House of Representatives, two factions are already setting their sights on the 2021 budget.

To ensure control of the 2021 budget, the House leadership implemented a major shake-up in the 302-member chamber on Monday, aggravating the rift between Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and his presumptive successor, Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco.

The House leadership replaced Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, chairperson of the powerful appropriations committee, with Rep. Eric Yap of the ACT-CIS party list, a close friend of the President’s son, Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte.

The appropriations committee oversees the filing and deliberations on the yearly budget before it is approved in plenary session.

House leaders also stripped a Velasco loyalist, Oriental Mindoro Rep. Doy Leachon, of the chairmanship of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal, replacing him with Kabayan Rep. Ron Salo.

‘So be it’

Reacting to his replacement, Ungab said: “I believe that the only guide to a man is his conscience, and the truth will always prevail no matter what. I have served my country and people well to the utmost of my ability. I accept my fate and so be it.”

Leachon was more combative as he blasted Cayetano’s allies for the “multibillion price of PDP-[Laban]’s loss of voice in this Congress” and the “probable and eventual dishonor of the term-sharing agreement.”

“They can rob and take away all of our positions especially from PDP-Laban but we’ll never bow down to this masked leadership of tyranny,” he said

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Cayetano hinted he had no plans of relinquishing control over the 2021 spending bill by asserting that the turnover of House leadership under his term-sharing deal with Velasco should be in November, not October, coinciding with budget deliberations.

Those few weeks could spell the difference between a Cayetano-led or Velasco-led appropriations law for 2021, only a year away from the next presidential elections, and determine whose districts would get the choicest cuts.

Only 15 months

Under the deal, Cayetano, a member of the Nacionalista Party, should be in office for only 15 months from the date he assumed the speakership on July 22, 2019, while his presumptive successor from the ruling PDP-Laban would take over for the remaining 21 months.