Same faces, same names

We returned to our usual face-to-face Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast news forum after more than two and a half years of holding this through online conferencing. We turned to online platform following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in March 2020. We’re back last Wednesday to our venue at Café Adriatico in Remedios Circle in Malate, Manila where we hold this for more than six years now.

Since Metro Manila areas are all still under the Alert Level-1, we require though strict observance at the venue of the minimum health protocols. Better to be safe than sorry while there are still risks of COVID-19 infection amid more transmissible variants.

For more than six months, there was nationwide lockdown imposed by former president Rodrigo Duterte that started on March 15, 2020. In a bid to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, all public gatherings, both in-door and outside venues, were disallowed.

Four days before the lockdown, Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum had San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora as guest who motored all the way to our venue in Manila. Ominous of the deadly turn of pandemic, the COVID-19 cases first erupted in San Juan City. Mayor Zamora at that time was going after people who refused to be placed under hospital quarantine.

While not a drop of anti-COVID vaccine was available yet in our country, we all tried to adapt and evolve with the pandemic restrictions. Restrained by the COVID lockdowns, we restarted our weekly news forum via zoom webinar. Even before the pandemic, we were livestreaming online already the Kapihan sa Manila Bay via our own Facebook page.

On May 27, 2020, we re-launched our Kapihan sa Manila Bay via zoom webinar and featured medical doctors as guests precisely to talk about the rising COVID-19 cases in our country coming from the first strain of the virus originating from Wuhan City, China. Department of Health (DOH) undersecretary Rosario Vergeire led our panel of guest doctors.

It took Albay Rep. Joey Salceda to require a face-to-face meeting as condition to his accepting my invitation for him to guest again in Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Wednesday. Salceda has also been pushing for the resumption of face-to-face classes as among the measures to help boost the country’s economic recovery. Except for non-schooling ages, Salceda stressed all students and teachers must undergo vaccination and boosters as added protection against COVID-19 infection.

We invited Salceda to tackle what can we expect from the maiden state of the nation address (SONA) of newly installed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. when the 19th Congress holds the traditional joint opening sessions on Monday, July 25.

Running and winning together under the UniTeam banner in the last May 9 elections, Salceda noted with optimism the country is now being headed in the next six years by President Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte who both belong to one coalition. Such, he cited, augurs well for the country. Coming from two different political parties, he recalled, the division of previous administrations often got into the way of governance during the two previous presidents and the VPs of the country.

But just like any change of administration, the incoming 19th Congress is yet again taking shape from the same molds.

The veteran Albay Congressman is back to his former party, the Lakas Christian-Muslim Democrats (CMD). As of this writing, Salceda could not say how many more members of the House of Representatives will also rejoin the Lakas-CMD. The Lakas-CMD once lorded the Congresses in the past as ruling majority party that allied with the incumbent administration in power.

Currently, incoming House Speaker Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez heads the Lakas-CMD as party president. A first cousin on the mother side of President Marcos, Romualdez vows to restore the Lakas-CMD as the ruling majority party at the 19th Congress. As of last count, there are now 64 Lakas-CMD card-bearing members at the Lower House. Many of them, including Salceda, come from the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Laban ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) that comprised the erstwhile “super majority” of the previous 18th Congress.

As of last headcount, there are 62 remaining PDP-Laban at the Lower House; and the rest come from, namely: 60 party-list representatives; 50 from the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC); 39 Nacionalista Party (NP); 38 National Union Party (NUP); and 9 from the Liberal Party (LP).

Salceda’s return to the Lakas-CMD is quite inevitable. After all, he openly pushed for the VP bid of former Davao City Mayor Sara. Moreover, Salceda’s erstwhile “boss,” former president and now returning as Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the chairperson emeritus of the Lakas-CMD.

Although she is the founding head of their regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago, ex-Mayor Sara was sworn in to join the Lakas-CMD. After she accepted their VP draft, she became the Lakas-CMD co-chair with Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. Ex-Sen. Marcos ran and won as presidential standard-bearer of the Partido Federal but the Lakas-CMD adopted him and Mayor Sara as VP bet.

Salceda got to chair again the powerful House ways and means committee that passes upon all tax and revenue-related bills that must originate from the Lower Chamber. He was among the more than 200 House members who signed up en masse to the so-called “super majority” during the 17th and 18th Congress spanning the six-year term of former President Duterte. It was the former Speaker, Davao del Sur Rep. Panteleon Alvarez, who organized the “super majority” at the House following the maiden SONA at the 17th Congress in July 2016 of then president Duterte.

Apparently, many of the re-elected PDP-Laban congressmen are still holding on to party loyalty. With two days left before SONA, the new composition of the House leadership and committee assignments have yet to come out. Most likely than not, it will be the same faces, same names in this new Congress.