Why the change of leadership in the Senate?

There is so much speculation why Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III was elected last Monday as the new senate president thus wresting away the highest power from then senate president Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III. Many pundits see this move supposedly to address the dissatisfaction of senators over the leadership of Pimentel who stepped down from his post when he knew some 17 senators signed a resolution to elect Sotto to the senate presidency.

When he resigned, Pimentel said he was stepping down from his post and thanked his colleagues from the majority bloc for having "tolerated me or stomached me in the past 22 months." Hmmm, it seems that there were just too many complaints against Pimentel as mentioned by senators in recent interviews. Pimentel was "too nice" and did not defend the chamber strongly enough from criticisms, including those from his PDP-Laban partymate, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

I'm just wondering why this sudden change of leadership happened just a couple of weeks after the Supreme Court approved the Quo Warranto ouster of SC Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno? I heard from certain pundits these senators were not pleased that Pimentel did not exert enough effort to speed up the impeachment process against Sereno and in the end, the SC went ahead of the Senate. These 17 senators still believe that an impeachment is the only way to remove an impeachable officer and this is why they ousted Pimentel.

Accordingly, the senators wanted the impeachment of Sereno in their hands because they can literally "profit" from it just like how the senators "profited" from the removal of former chief justice Renato Corona. This is not to mention that in the coming election year they would get free media mileage from their grandstanding during the impeachment trial. So think what you want to think, but perhaps this is why Sotto is now the new senate president.

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I was about to write a comment about that "misencounter" between Mayor Tomas Osmeña and his nephew Councilor Renato "Junjun" Osmeña as reported in The FREEMAN last Monday, but then I came across what my Facebook friend John Saavedra wrote, so I'm reprinting his thoughts here as it is almost exactly like my thoughts.

"Junjun Osmeña is just another Osmeña who exercises his job as a member of the City Council of Cebu. When he joined other councilors in questioning his uncle's pet project, the Kawit Island Project because of controversial provisions in the proposal, Mayor Tomas Osmeña calls him a disgrace to the Osmeña family. WTF! The mayor wants his nephew to just say 'yes uncle,' 'ok uncle,' 'approve uncle.'"

The proposal has many questionable provisions, which is why PDP-Laban councilors, including Vice Mayor Labella and Junjun Osmeña, referred back the proposal to a committee to restudy. One of the provisions is the sharing scheme. The value of the lot in Kawit Island is P10 billion, but the proposed share is just 10 percent of the income of the entire project that only cost P18 billion; with casino, hotel rooms, restaurants, and other establishments to be opened, the Cebu City government, based ontheproposal,willreceiveNOTHINGassharefromtheirincome.

And the period of the joint venture is, as proposed, 50 years and renewable. Granting arguendo that that 10 percent is just enough as for them Cebu City is just nothing but a "mere minute city" as compared to the proponent as an institution (unsa ra g'yud 'tawn na ang Cebu City), not all the Cebuanos want to surrender its rights over Kawit Island without exercising due diligence.

It's either the mayor is serious in his stance to just surrender Kawit Island to a private entity without the required diligence of a good father for a "specially private arrangement to take care of his future" at the expense of the Cebuano people, or he is just "building up" a fracas (either for PR purposes against his enemies inside City Hall or a trap of future cases in the event the nonBOPK councilors heed to their whims), but the Cebuanos, including this poor voter, will monitor that controversial project.

Thanks for this piece, John, you literally took it out of my mouth. Yes, kudos to Councilor Junjun Osmeña for being a true fiscalizer!