Filling in: House names Belmonte caretaker solon of Batanes

The House of Representatives has designated Quezon City Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr. as the caretaker of the Batanes lone district, following the death of Rep. Henedina Abad last month.

Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas proposed Belmonte’s designation during the House session on Monday evening, after returning from a five-week long recess.

Belmonte is the current vice chair of the Liberal Party, the now-decimated ruling party under the Aquino administration. He served as House Speaker from January 2001 to June 2001, and from July 2010 to June 2016. He has joined the House majority.

Abad, the wife of former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, succumbed to cancer on Oct. 8.

In the current Congress, she was initially named chair of the committee on government reorganization. But she was stripped of the position after going against Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez’s directive to vote in favor of the revival of the death penalty for drug-related crimes.