Clash brewing in Senate between top Rody allies?

MANILA, Philippines – A clash is brewing between president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s two major Senate allies as they make their respective push for the leadership of the chamber.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III said nothing stands now in the way of his being voted as next Senate president. But the other aspirant to the post, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, said Pimentel has attracted supporters in the chamber who do not share Duterte’s reform agenda.

In an interview over dwIZ yesterday, Pimentel said his bagging the Senate presidency is certain and that all that is left is a formal announcement of the development at the opening of the 17th Congress on July 25 as well as the final number of senators backing his bid.

Pimentel said that he now has the signatures of 13 senators on a resolution backing him as the next Senate president.  An aspirant to the post should be elected by at least 13 of his colleagues.

He did not name the 13 but based on a list disclosed to reporters by Sen. Vicente Sotto III,  they were current Senate President Franklin Drilon, Francis Pangilinan, Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, Leila de Lima, Risa Hontiveros, Juan Edgardo Angara, Gregorio Honasan, Nancy Binay, Sherwin Gatchalian, Loren Legarda, Grace Poe and Panfilo Lacson.

Pimentel said two more senators would sign the document as soon as they return from their overseas trips. The PDP-Laban, headed by Pimentel and under which Duterte ran for president, confirmed the two were newly elected senators Joel Villanueva and Manny Pacquiao.

Instead of joining forces to field a single candidate for Senate president, Duterte allies Cayetano and Pimentel decided to make their own bids for the post.

Cayetano earlier claimed having the support of 15 senators.

He has on his side Senators Cynthia Villar, the first to sign the resolution backing Cayetano as Senate president; Juan Miguel Zubiri, and Joseph Victor Ejercito. The group reportedly has senator-elect Richard Gordon also on its side.

Villar earlier revealed that Duterte wanted Cayetano to become Senate president and that she committed to the incoming president to support his choice.

However, with the Liberal Party and its allied groups, together with the group of Sotto deciding to back Pimentel, the numbers were not in favor of Cayetano.

Senators Francis Escudero and Antonio Trillanes IV have both indicated their wish to be members of the minority bloc while Sen. Ralph Recto is still undecided on which group to join.

Friendly rivalry

Pimentel said he intends to have a face-to-face meeting with Cayetano on the issue.

“From the start this was a friendly competition. I expect that this won’t affect our friendship,” he said.

The PDP-Laban president said he is also open to talking to the members of Cayetano’s group and that they are free to join him in what is expected to be a Senate supermajority bloc.

In return for their support for his bid for the Senate presidency, Pimentel said the 15 senators would be given the privilege to choose the committees they wish to head.

He stressed this has been a practice in the Senate each time a new leadership takes over. “The early bird gets the first choice. That is the basic principle,” Pimentel said.

He said it would be up to the 15 senators to decide if they want to give way to any of their colleagues who want the post of committee chair.

Speaking to reporters in Davao City last Friday, Cayetano said he cannot accept any committee chairmanship being offered by Pimentel’s camp. Pimentel had said he was willing to give Cayetano the chairmanship of the Blue Ribbon committee.

“I don’t need a position. I can help the President even without a (Senate) committee,” he said, rejecting any committee offered to him by Pimentel’s group.

“My offer to run for Senate president was conditioned on the fact that we will have a majority that will be supportive of the mandate of the president,” Cayetano said.

But instead of change, Cayetano said his colleagues have opted for status quo. He said such “majority” might eventually become “obstructionist.”

He pointed out for instance how Lacson and De Lima seem to clash over various issues. De Lima has been vocal against death penalty and summary executions of criminals.

Meanwhile, Pimentel said he doesn’t see any problem in the relationship between the Senate and Malacañang under the Duterte administration despite the latter’s warning lawmakers not to get in his way.

“I don’t see any problems because all of the senators I spoke with want to support the president so that he would be successful in his programs in government. No one is against an all-out war against crime and corruption. We all want this to stop,” Pimentel said.

“We are not like a court that could issue a TRO (temporary restraining order) on an executive action. It is not as if we will prevent them from acting because we have an ongoing investigation,” Pimentel said in the dwIZ interview.

Pimentel said he understood the message of Duterte as a warning against protecting criminals or misusing the power of Congress to investigate.

“If the power is used responsibly then no good program would be affected just because Congress is conducting an investigation,” Pimentel said.