CREDIBILITY MATTERS MOST

There was a lot left unsaid about the transition at the House of Representatives that resulted in reason prevailing over selfish ambition in the assumption of Speaker Lord Alan Velasco to the top post in the chamber.

Velasco, in a television interview on Monday, said Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte was pivotal in his fight to enforce his part of the term-sharing deal after Alan Peter Cayetano tried to go back on his promise.

“Mayor Sara Duterte is really a big help. We know the influence that Ma’am Sara has and I think that was a big push in my election as House Speaker,” Velasco said.

Under the deal brokered by President Duterte in 2019, Cayetano was to assume leadership at the House for the first 15 months of the 18th Congress, then Velasco would take over for the rest of the chamber’s remaining session.

Cayetano in the twilight of his part of the deal insisted on staying as Speaker, citing the “overwhelming” support of his colleagues, the need to pass the 2021 national budget and his long experience as member of Congress.

Some serious arm-twisting happened to allow Cayetano the chance to head the House, which was obviously a stepping stone to a greater ambition in 2022.

The puzzle to many was President Rodrigo Duterte’s seeming reluctant endorsement of the deal, since it started as he expressed his desire not to intervene in the affairs of the House.

Still, in 2019 he made an announcement of anointing the Taguig-Pateros congressman for Speaker to put an end to weeks of wrangling among his Congress allies over who should occupy the top House seat.

Duterte then pronounced: “Your speaker will be Alan Peter Cayetano. He shares the term with Lord Velasco,” just like that, as if the words were forced out of his mouth.

Congressmen toed the presidential line as the majority voted for Cayetano just hours before the formal opening of the House of Representatives on 22 July 2019.

Apparently, Cayetano had the President going along with his scheme since he had virtually zero chance of getting the House post in a fair vote. Among the promises he gave was to have the passage of Mr. Duterte’s pet program of federalism in the last three years of the President’s term that would have to go through the revision of the Constitution.

In the 17th Congress, former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez succeeded in getting his peers to pass the bill that called for a shift from a presidential to a federal form of government.

Alvarez even had to fight tooth and nail for the bill as he threatened the House to go it alone, but he still failed to get the Senate to pass the measure.

Nothing such happened under Cayetano’s term as Speaker. He snatched the post despite having, based on independent counts, only some 20 supporters in the House, while Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez had the majority of congressmen who had signed a manifesto supporting him for the speakership. Velasco was a natural choice, however, since he belongs to the President’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino.

What happens now to Cayetano and his quest for a loftier post in the next national elections?

He faces an investigation from the Ombudsman on his possible involvement in anomalies in the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (PHISGOC), the body that oversaw the country’s hosting of the 30th Southeast Asian Games.

Ombudsman Samuel Martires formed a panel to probe the financial deals entered into by PHISGOC and had said that Cayetano was included in the investigations.

The former speaker will not fade away peacefully as he vowed to “confront” allies of Velasco for misdeeds even in the private businesses they were engaged in.

The next likely target of Cayetano would be a return to the Senate if not a futile shot for a presidential bid instead of staying as a regular congressman with little clout.

After the debacle that he caused in the House, which nearly imperiled the necessary 2021 national budget that the government requires to face the threats of the coronavirus disease, which is resurging in most parts of the world, Cayetano’s credibility is at an all-time low.

The way things stand for Cayetano now, he might even have a hard time to regain his seat in Congress.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

“Next likely target of Cayetano would be a return to the Senate if not a futile shot for a presidential bid instead of staying as a regular congressman with little clout.

“Some serious arm-twisting happened to allow Cayetano the chance to head the House, which was obviously a stepping stone to a greater ambition in 2022.