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By Sammy Martin, Correspondent
The Senate debates have apparently degenerated
into name-calling.
In a hearing on the environment Tuesday, Sen.
Jamby Madrigal called the committee chairman, Sen. Pia Cayetano, a
“spoiled brat.”
Some 15 minutes into the hearing, as Cayetano
was making introductory remarks, Madrigal interrupted with comments
on how the meeting ought to be conducted and that there should be
several other meetings. Tuesday’s hearing was the first.
But as Cayetano started to answer, Madrigal
walked out.
Reporters caught up with Madrigal in the
hallway, where she said, “I cannot deal with a legislator who is a
spoiled brat.”
As the hearing continued, Cayetano said she
wants to adopt 25 of the 30 bills that had been lengthily discussed
in the Thirteenth Congress to save time and give more time to the
new senators who were not part of the past Congress to make their
own inputs.
She explained that adoption of what they had
finished in the past Congress had been done before and most of the
bills now filed in the Fourteenth Congress were actually the same
bills.
“I told Sen. Madrigal that she has the floor
to ask questions to our resource persons present, and maybe she can
add some details before we consolidate the 30 bills and if she has
something in mind resource persons who need to be invited to be
resource persons, she can make a request,” Cayetano later told
reporters.
She said problem is, Madrigal does not ask
questions. Instead, she gives lengthy remarks, Cayetano added.
“We want to pass legislation in the soonest
possible time in this particular case to declare protected areas as
soon as we can,” Cayetano said.
Asked by reporters about Madrigal’s
disparaging remark, Cayetano said she is sorry to hear that but
added that Madrigal simply misinterpreted her.
Her brother, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, defended
his sister, saying she “could be spoiled but not brat.”
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