Rolando Andaya Jr. ready to give up House post

MANILA, Philippines — Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said yesterday he is willing to give up his powerful position as House of Representatives majority leader any time.

He made the statement in reaction to his Camarines colleague Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte’s call for his ouster for allegedly sabotaging President Duterte with his inquiry into the alleged multibillion-peso flood control scam.

“I will be the first to vote that I be relieved as majority leader. To me, this post is forced labor. When this was first offered to me, I begged off a hundred times. I was recommending my good friend Fred Castro (of Capiz). I was happy being deputy speaker,” he said.

He said no one should doubt his loyalty to Duterte.

“We have passed all the President’s major bills. We approved the bill on higher alcohol taxes when he did not ask for it yet. There is no greater proof of my loyalty to the President than that,” he said.

Andaya added that he would thank any House colleague who takes over his job. 

However, he pointed out that as long as he is majority leader, “nobody can stop me from pursuing the investigation on the flood control scam and other anomalous budget practices under Secretary (Benjamin) Diokno.” 

“I will unmask his conspirators, in and out of Congress,” he said.

In calling for Andaya’s ouster as majority leader, Villafuerte accused his province mate of “subverting Malacañang with his nonstop maneuvers to further derail the already-delayed approval of the 2019 national budget, which puts flesh into the President’s priority programs this year to attack poverty and sustain high growth.” 

“If he has any sense of delicadeza left in him, he owes it to himself, his peers in the House of Representatives and to the Filipino people to resign, given that he has issued a statement scoffing at his post as a ‘burden’ and act of ‘forced labor’ that he had long wanted to be relieved of his duties,” Villafuerte said.

“Andaya does not deserve to remain a minute longer as House majority leader for committing acts inimical to the interests of the government and of the people, especially the poor who have elected the President based on the promise that he would bring real change and liberate them from poverty during his watch,” he said.

He added that House members who are Duterte supporters should ask their majority leader on Monday: “Are you with us or against us?”

Lawmakers are reconvening on Monday after a month-long Christmas vacation.

“My fellow Bicolano legislator has unfortunately become the odd man out in the current House leadership, given that his No. 1 job as majority leader is to shepherd through the bigger chamber the legislative agenda of the government, including the annual GAA, that would let President Duterte deliver on his campaign promises to the Filipino people,” Villafuerte said.

He said Andaya’s “failure or refusal to put an immediate stop to his endless tirades against the national budget would be a confirmation of a long-nagging suspicion that he is a sleeper agent of the political opposition out to destabilize the administration.”

The House leader is running for Camarines Sur governor in the May elections against incumbent Luis Miguel Villafuerte, Rep. Villafuerte’s son.