R.P. Political Scene
By DANIEL E. LLANTO
Loyal Arroyo follower Rep. Edcel Lagman delivered the traditional contra-SONA on behalf of the now opposition Lakas-Kampi-CMD in the House of Representatives. As expected, the opposition defended the nine-year reign of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo by dismissing the July 26 state-of-the-nation address of President Benigno Aquino III as “defective and deficient.”
Lagman must still be smarting from his loss to Quezon City Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr. for the Speakership because of fence-straddling members of his party, attracted to the Liberal Party of President Aquino and Belmonte. In the voting held hours before the afternoon SONA of the President, Belmonte garnered 227 votes from House members against only 29 for Lagman.
In the contra-SONA, Lagman said Mr. Aquino’s allegations of anomalies against the Arroyo administration were the result of wrong information fed by members of the Cabinet and assistants. Except for Sen. Joker Arroyo, this view is apparently not shared by opposition members in the Senate.
The senator from Bicol likewise believes P-Noy was given wrong, data false statistics and flawed analyses by his Cabinet. For this reason, Arroyo said the President ought not to ask members of the Commission on Appointments to go easy on such Cabinet appointees.
But Senate minority whip Alan Peter Cayetano, giving a preview of his own contra-SONA to be delivered on Monday, said he will not contradict but instead offer help to the President in carrying out the promises he made in his SONA. Cayetano was nominated for Senate president by Arroyo in a separate election but was swamped by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile who obtained 17 votes of the 21 senators, minus fugitive Sen. Panfilo Lacson, detained Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago (on leave for health reasons).
Before Sen. Miriam Santiago took her leave of absence, she took her oath of office before Chief Justice Renato Corona as a “vote of confidence” on the latter’s appointment by former President Arroyo during the election period. If the gesture was directed at President Aquino, who earlier chose to be sworn in by Associate Justice Conchita Morales, it now seems to accomplish nothing because of a perceived mellowing down of the President on the issue.
In the preface to his SONA, Mr. Aquino acknowledged the presence of the Chief Justice right after former Presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph Estrada.
Now, even the group that former presidential son Mikey Arroyo claims to represent as its party-list nominee is disowning him. The Commission on Elections earlier discarded two separate petitions to disqualify Arroyo as nominee of Ang Galing Pinoy (AGP) party-list organization. This party-list group is composed of security guards and tricycle drivers.
Tricycle driver Danilo Antipasado of Caloocan City went to the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) to ask for the disqualification of Mikey as its representative in the chamber. The tricycle driver was accompanied by security guards Rowell Pino and Ronald Estrella.
In the petition, Antipasado questioned the Comelec decision to allow Arroyo to represent any marginalized and under-represented sectors like AGP being a scion of the Macapagal and Arroyo clans. Also questioned was the fact that Arroyo was still going around choosing which party-list group to join as of late February 2009. This violates the party-list law, which provides that one should be a bona fide member of a party-list group at least 90 days before the elections before he can represent it.
With an unprecedented 85 percent trust rating for President Aquino, the 15th Congress that opened its sessions on July 26 is widely expected to be Aquino-friendly. This showed in the election of Belmonte as House Speaker and the unexpected win of Enrile as Senate President. Licking their chops are Speaker wannabes Edcel Lagman and Danilo Suarez and Senate chief aspirant Manuel Villar.
But political analysts warn that if P-Noy’s popularity dives after the 100-day honeymoon, the politicians that cast their lot with LP may switch back to their old parties. There are 74 Lakas-Kampi-CMD members in the House who have expressed support for Belmonte, himself a Lakas member until he defected to LP in the run-up to the May 10 elections.
If P-Noy gives these Lakas members a reason to be disenchanted with his rule, the next possible scenario is a return to power of former President Arroyo. She is believed preparing for that what-if situation, as shown by the first measure she filed as representative of Pampanga’s second district, which is a resolution seeking to amend the 1987 Constitution. Charter change was in fact high on the agenda when Lakas-Kampi-CMD members held a two-day workshop before the formal opening of Congress.
share: del.icio.us.
Reddit 
Digg 
Yahoo 
Wink 
Windows 
Google 
Newsvine 
Full story