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The issue on the premeditated marginalization or even demise of the House minority...

Press Release

The issue on the premeditated marginalization or even demise of the House minority as engineered by the leadership of the supermajority is now with the Supreme Court for adjudication.

The petition for mandamus dated 14 October 2016 has been docketed as G.R. No. 227757, entitled “Rep. Teddy Brawner Baguilat, Jr., Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, Rep. Raul A. Daza, Rep. Edgar R. Erice, Rep. Emmanuel A. Billones, Rep. Tomasito S. Villarin and Rep. Gary C. Alejano vs. Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez, Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas and Rep. Danilo E. Suarez”.

Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, one of the petitioners, disclosed that the petition praying for the recognition of Rep. Teddy Brawner Baguilat as Minority Leader is anchored on the following grounds:

  1. Since Baguilat was the clear runner-up to Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez in the Speakership contest on 25 July 2016, by an unbroken tradition he automatically becomes the Minority Leader because he defeated Rep. Danilo Suarez by a vote of 8 to 7, thus relegating Suarez as third placer.

  2. Suarez was “elected” on 27 July 2016 by an aggrupation principally consisting of pseudo minority members who were directed by the leadership of the supermajority to beef up the small group of Suarez by first abstaining in the election for Speaker and then convening to elect Suarez as “minority leader”.

  3. Under the last paragraph of Section 8 of Rule II, all those who did not align themselves with the majority or the minority, as when they abstained from voting in the Speakership contest, are considered independent Members of the House, not as minority members.

  4. Suarez was disqualified to be minority leader because he belonged to the majority after voting for Speaker Alvarez.

  5. Ten of those who “elected” Suarez as “minority leader” soon returned to the majority coalition, thus revealing the malevolent scheme to subvert the choice of a minority leader.

  6. The separate election of the minority leader by members of the minority under the second paragraph of Section 8 of Article II of the Rules of the House only applies when there is no clear runner-up to the Speaker as when there was a lone candidate, which happened in the 14th Congress in 2007, or when three candidates for Speaker figure in a tie for runner-up, which has not happened.

  7. Suarez as the Majority’s “minority leader” has utterly failed to discharge the role of the opposition.

  8. Petitioners who constitute the authentic minority are the real oppositionists in the House as shown by their consistent advocacies and pronouncements critical of the administration and the majority.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN