Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
Office of the Minority Leader
17 January 2012
0916-6406737 / 0918-9120137
The hand of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is indelibly stamped on the manifesto seeking the installation of Rep. Danilo Suarez as the new Minority Leader.
The purported sixteen signatories to the Suarez manifesto included the former President’s two sons, Rep. Diosdado M. Arroyo and Rep. Juan Miguel Macapagal Arroyo.
The Arroyo brothers signed the manifesto despite earlier protestations from the Arroyos that they would remain neutral to debunk accusations that the former president was behind the ouster plot against Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman.
Except for Rep. Simeon Datumanong, who was Secretary of Public Works and Secretary of Justice during the Arroyo Administration, all former Arroyo cabinet members now in the minority sided with Suarez, namely Rep. Nasser Pangandaman, former Secretary of Agrarian Reform, Rep. Arthur Yap, former Secretary of Agriculture, who reportedly phoned in his conformity according to the Suarez camp, and Rep. Augusto Syjuco, former Administrator of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), who claims to be still with the minority despite his having transferred to the Nacionalista Party .
Rep. Jose Aquino, former Presidential Assistant for the CARAGA Region, and Rep. Rodolfo Albano, former Chairman of the Energy Regulatory Commission both during the Arroyo presidency, also signed the Suarez manifesto.
Lagman has challenged the validity of the Suarez manifesto on the following grounds:
1) There were five minority members who signed both the resolution retaining Lagman as Minority Leader and the manifesto supporting Suarez as the new Minority Leader. The double signatures cancel out the conflicting preferences resulting in the nullification of the choices. By suppletory application or parity of reasoning, the Omnibus Election Code is instructive when it provides that “where there are two or more candidates voted for in an office for which the law authorizes the election of only one, the vote shall not be counted in favor of any of them”.
The dual signatories are Rep. Albano, Rep. Pangandaman, Rep. Mohammed Hussein Pangandaman, Rep. Erico Aumentado and Rep. Reena Concepcion Obillo.
2) Two signatories to the manifesto, Rep. Augusto Syjuco and Rep. Fatima Aliah Dimaporo, are disqualified because they have joined the Nationalista Party which is in coalition with the administration, and they have not presented any concrete proof that they have gotten the prior consent of the Nationalist Party leadership to remain in the opposition, unlike Rep. Carlos Padilla and Rep. Marc Cagas who secured the permission of Senator Manuel Villar, President of the Nationalist Party, before the start of the 15th Congress to join the ranks of the minority while remaining as members of the Nationalista Party.
3) Rep. Yap should not be counted as a signatory because he did not personally sign the manifesto, and he has called Lagman this noon from Bohol to say he was staying neutral.
If the said invalid and contested signatures are not counted for Suarez, he would fall short of the requisite absolute majority of 16 supportive opposition members to replace Lagman given the number of minority members at 30 to include presumptively Syjuco and Aliah Dimaporo.
The Suarez manifesto is based on an alleged term-sharing agreement between Lagman and Suarez which Lagman has consistently disputed because the term-splitting arrangement was limited to the Speakership in the event the then Lakas Kampi won the Speakership with Lagman as the candidate. There was no term-sharing forged for the minority leadership.
Lagman in not a stranger to term-sharing agreements. Before he assumed the Chairmanship of the powerful Committee on Appropriations in the 14th Congress, then Speaker Jose De Venecia brokered a term-sharing agreement between him and Rep. Junie Cua. Lagman complied with the arrangement despite the fact that De Venecia was not anymore the incumbent because he had been replaced by Speaker Prospero Nograles.