Defensors leave LP to join PDP-Laban
ILOILO CITY — For the Defensors, one of the most influential political clan in Iloilo, it's now goodbye to the Liberal Party and hello to the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDPD-Laban) party of President Rodrigo Duterte.
On August 31, Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensors, Sr. announced his decision to move to PDP-Laban along with his sons, Representative Arthur Defensor Jr. (3rd district, Iloilo) and Provincial Board Member Lorenz Defensor (3rd dist., Iloilo).
Governor Defensor said he already talked to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, PDP-Laban president, over the phone about the transfer.
Talks about the Defensors hopping into the ruling party came to light after House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, PDP-Laban secretary-general, openly urged the governor to join PDP-Laban, during the mass oath taking of around 3,000 elected officials in Iloilo and Guimaras, as new members of the President’s political party.
The governor said of Alvarez: “He told me he is happy with my decision to join the PDP-Laban because I can be of great help to them in espousing, especially the program of plan to shift from a unitary form of government to federal form of government because he knew that I had been an assemblyman. I always batted for federalism.)
Defensor said he will go to Manila soon to finalize their oathtaking schedule.
The governor also said he talked to former Interior Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas II, an LP official, about his plan of leaving the LP in favor of the PDP-Laban. "I met Secretary Mar to say my goodbyes to the Liberal Party. I'm happy because Sec. Mar told me that he understood my reasons for the transfer," he added.
Further, Defensor said Roxas even assured him that long-standing friendship and personal relations will not, in any way, be affected. "We shall continue to be allies in just and honorable causes," he added.
Defensor, a lawyer, became the first mayor of his hometown Mina in Iloilo at the age of 26. In 1984, he ran and won as an opposition assemblyman in the Batasan Pambansa and became a critic of the late President Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship. In 2013, he moved to LP from LakasCMD.
In 1986, President Corazon Aquino appointed Defensor as undersecretary of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports. Three years later, he was named commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). He ran and won as Governor of the Province of Iloilo in 1992, a position he held for nine years.
After serving for three consecutive terms he ran as representative of third congressional district of Iloilo and was re-elected in 2004 and 2007. He then returned as Iloilo governor since then.