Sotto: Imee led move to revamp Senate
Sen. Imee Marcos tried to lead a move to reorganize the Senate on Friday, but failed because the “coup attempt” was unable to secure the required number of votes, Senate President Vicente Sotto III revealed on Friday.
The Senate President also hinted that one senator, whom Senate observers identified as Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, has initiated talks for a possible transfer to the majority bloc.
“Someone is talking to us,” Sotto said, declining to confirm that it was Go. “I can’t answer that with a yes because for all you know, they’re just approaching us for talks.”
Go is a member of the chamber’s nine-person minority bloc that includes former Senate President Francis Escudero, former Majority Leader Joel Villanueva, Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Rodante Marcoleta, Imee Marcos, Robin Padilla, Jinggoy Estrada and Ronald dela Rosa, who has still not attended Senate proceedings, and Go.
The minority faces a 15-man majority bloc consisting of the remaining 15 senators, including independent Sen. Miguel Zubiri, who is currently the Senate majority leader.
In an online press conference, Sotto bared behind-the-scenes details of the attempted ouster, but he clarified that Go was not among those who signed the resolution for the putative move to replace him.
Sotto said he doubted that the minority secured at least 13 votes to unseat him.
“They would have come to my office or gotten in touch with me and showed me,” he added. “Because that’s the easiest thing to do.”
“But no, they went to the office of Sen. [Loren] Legarda,” he said of the senator who was rumored to have replaced him. “So they didn’t have the numbers.”
2 possible triggers
He surmised that the “removal of Sen. Imee Marcos from the committee on foreign relations” served as the “trigger” for this move.
Sotto said that Zubiri offered Marcos the chairmanship of the constitutional amendments panel, which Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan intends to vacate, but she declined.
Sotto said Pangilinan wants to vacate the constitutional amendments panel, so he could focus on the committee on agriculture, food and agrarian reform and the justice and human rights panel, which he chairs.
Sotto said the other “trigger” for the coup could have been the draft report of the blue ribbon committee on the flood control corruption scandal.
Sotto confirmed that he had the committee report on anomalous flood control projects in the country, but the Senate President said it had not been approved by the Senate plenary and could not be made public.
In a message to reporters, Sotto expressed confidence that the blue ribbon committee, headed by Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson, would know how to handle such petitions.
“It’s a draft and therefore not official. If the other committee members have not even read or seen it, it cannot be made public,” Sotto said. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why those mentioned there suddenly became agitated.”
The committee recommends the filing of charges against former Senate President Francis Escudero and senators Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva.
