Sotto taking over as Senate president as early as Monday

Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto. Photo by EDWIN BACASMAS

The Senate is likely to have a new leader on Monday at the earliest with Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto taking over the presidency from Aquilino Pimentel III.

“What is being discussed now is when (the leadership change will happen)?” Sen. Panfilo Lacson said in a radio program on dwIZ on Saturday.

Lacson said the majority-bloc senators would have a caucus on Monday to discuss the matter.

“Will it be this Monday or next week or the following week?” he said, adding that last week’s meeting between Sotto and Pimentel did not set the exact date for the leadership change.

“What is definite is that there is a signed resolution where the majority bloc in the Senate agreed to the change of leadership,” he said of the document, now with the signatures of 15 senators after Sen. Grace Poe, fresh from a trip abroad, signed it on Saturday.

Asked about the possible scenario of Monday’s caucus, Lacson said the bloc would ask Pimentel on his “thoughts” about Sotto taking over from him.

Should Pimentel ask for an extension of his presidency, Lacson said they would listen to his reasons and “we’ll pick it up from there.”

‘Reorganization’

Lacson made it clear the majority’s move was “not a coup d’etat” but a “reorganization” of the Senate leadership, whose presidency and majority floor leader positions would be left vacant by Pimentel and Sotto, respectively.

If it were a coup, he said, the ousted Senate President will automatically become the Senate minority leader.

The majority bloc also agreed to install Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri as the new majority leader, according to Lacson.

He conceded that a “combination of many incidents in the past” had led to the bid to replace Pimentel.

Lacson said some majority senators were “unhappy” over the move of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan, which Pimentel heads, to take in as members rival politicians of their families.

Some of his colleagues also resented the fact that Pimentel did not speak up against House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez when the later called the Senate “mababang kapulungan” (slow chamber) for not passing legislation quick enough, he said.

Pimentel likewise failed to vigorously fight Alvarez’s bid to have the Senate and House vote jointly in any Charter change bid, a move that would have made the Senate irrelevant, Lacson added.

Sotto, however, initially begged off when it looked like then that the Senate would have to convene as an impeachment court in the trial of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Lacson said.

But when Sereno was ousted by her Supreme Court colleagues in a quo warranto petition filed by the Solicitor General, making her impeachment by the House moot, Lacson said the way was now smooth for Sotto to accept his colleague’s vote.

Lacson said support for Sotto may be further strengthened by a member of the minority bloc who, he heard, was planning to join the majority.

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