Status quo for House committees despite new Speaker
The leadership change at the House of Representatives will not affect the committee chairmanships in the near future, with the chamber opting to focus its attention first to deliberations on the proposed 2026 national budget.
House leaders on Thursday, including Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, said it would not be possible to reorganize the committees at this time despite the election of Isabela Rep. Faustino “Bojie” Dy III on Wednesday afternoon as the new Speaker.
“We’re in the middle of the budget season and we have to pass the most important law (the next General Appropriations Act) of our country,” Marcos, the Ilocos Norte representative and son of the President, told reporters.
“I don’t think there will be any changes for now in the chairships or the composition of the leadership because it’s too disruptive to what we are going through.”
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, who earlier pushed for a reshuffle of chairmanships under a new Speaker, also agreed that it would be difficult to have it now, but said such changes were necessary for the House to truly pursue reforms.
But keeping the status quo might not apply to the House infrastructure committee which has begun investigating anomalous flood control projects.
This was after Dy announced on Wednesday that among his first marching orders as Speaker was for the House to cooperate with the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) created by President Marcos.
Dy assumed the speakership after Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez resigned from his post amid allegations linking him and his former appropriations chair and Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co not only to anomalous flood control projects but also to questionable insertions in the 2025 national budget.
Deputy Speaker and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin said that before Romualdez stepped down, he instructed the tricommittee—composed of the committees on public accounts, on good government and on public works—to wind down its hearings related to flood control issue and formally endorse what it had taken up to the ICI.
Infracomm chair and Bicol Saro Rep. Terry Ridon said the panel had yet to receive an order to terminate its inquiry.
But the committee will “closely coordinate with the ICI, particularly on sharing hearing transcripts, documents and other evidence submitted during the previous hearings,” he said.
As of Thursday, the committee had yet to meet with the new Speaker regarding the direction of its next hearings, he added.
The infracomm opened its inquiry on Sept. 2, with Romualdez still the Speaker and Malacañang yet to form the ICI.
Days before Dy succeeded Romualdez, House members like Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima were already urging the House leadership to defer to the independent commission to avoid suspicions of a cover-up and conflict of interest.
Ridon earlier said that once the commission was formed, both the House and the Senate must decide jointly whether to continue their own inquiries into flood control projects.
