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between Speaker Jose de Venecia and Congressman-elect
Pablo Garcia is turning into a bloody battle definitely not for the
faint of heart. All swords have been unsheathed and unless President
Arroyo intervenes, the fight between her allies could also leave her
bloodied.
Some leaders of JdV, including
Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr., have charged Garcia with using
funds of the Government Service Insurance System to buy support.
Garcia’s son, Winston, is the GSIS president and general manager.
Abante, a Protestant bishop, claimed that the young Garcia was
offering congressmen up to P300,000 to support his father. Abante
said the Garcia operations were conducted in a room at the Dusit
Hotel in Makati.
Garcia’s camp would not let
this bribe charge lying down. Congressman-elect Amado Bagatsing, a
Garcia supporter, later claimed that he had received an envelope
from a staff of JdV after he had endorsed JdV’s legislative
agenda. He estimated that the thick envelope could have contained up
to P400,000, or P100,000 higher than what Garcia had allegedly
offered.
Those are just feints and jabs,
it seems. For Winston Garcia had just filed a libel complaint
against Abante before the Pasay City Fiscal’s Office. Garcia
included the GSIS as complainant because Abante’s claims had
“ruined the goodwill and accomplishments that GSIS officers and
employees have been working so hard to achieve.” He said that GSIS
is now the biggest earning company in the country with net assets of
P400 billion.
Winston averred that, “As a
pension fund on which our public servants rely for their future
sustenance, our continuing existence is built on trust. Our
investments thrive because of trust. However, if that trust is
somehow eroded because of false imputations that strike at our
ability to keep safe our member’s funds, then the institution runs
the risk of going bankrupt.”
Rep. Eduardo Zialcita of Parañaque,
who said he was present when Bagatsing endorsed JdV’s legislative
agenda, said he did not see any envelope given to Bagatsing or to
any of the eight congressmen then present. JdV did sue Bagatsing for
libel but this did not mean that his camp was running away from the
fight. Instead of letting the issue simmers down, Abante
counterattacked. He called for Garcia’s resignation from the GSIS
for his alleged “highly immoral” involvement in his father’s
campaign for the speakership. Abante’s call was shared by Reps.
Arthur Defensor of Iloilo and Mauricio Domogan of Baguio City.
Expect the fight to worsen with
the declaration of Rep. Louie Villafuerte of Camarines Sur that the
Garcia camp would not agree to a straw vote among partners of the
majority coalition to determine who should be their common candidate
for speaker on July 23 when the Fourteenth Congress convenes. Louie,
the campaign manager of Garcia, is intent on having the leadership
issue settled on the floor, not in a caucus.
Congressman-elect Carlos Padilla
of Nueva Vizcaya said that Villafuerte might have a hidden agenda in
rejecting a presession straw vote. I remember that in the Eighth
Congress, Ramon V. Mitra and Francisco Sumulong settled the
speakership issue through a straw vote.
One of the most colorful figures
of the Marcos regime, Leonardo Perez, died last Saturday at the
National Kidney and Transplant Institute. Leony was congressman
representing Nueva Vizcaya from 1953 to 1967, and was senator from
1967 to 1972. It was as chairman of the Commission on Elections that
Leony became the favorite hate object of Marcos bashers.
I used to get a kick whenever I
saw Leony swaying from side to side as he groped his way to his seat
at the session hall of the regular Batasan. Leony ran for senator in
1987 and lost. He ran against Caloy Padilla in 1995 for the Tenth
Congress and lost. It might interest readers to know that Leony
immediately conceded a few days after the 1995 election.
Several years later, I met Leony
at the Shangri-la Restaurant on Times Street in Quezon City. When I
asked him if there was anything he had regretted when he was at the
Batasan, he paused for a moment, then replied: “Expunging from the
records the privileged speeches of Roning Mercado and Dodo Cagas.”
Rogaciano Mercado of Bulacan and
Douglas Cagas of Davao del Sur had delivered scathing privileged
speeches that excoriated Marcos. Perez said that if he were given a
chance, he would correct that “mistake.” Alas, he died without
getting such a chance.
efrendanao2003@yahoo.com
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