Vote on Villar set on Wednesday

SENATORS ARE LIKELY TO VOTE ON WEDNESDAY ON THE SENATE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE REPORT RECOMMENDING THE CENSURE OF NACIONALISTA PARTY PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRANT SEN. MANUEL VILLAR JR. IN CONNECTION WITH THE C-5 ROAD CONTROVERSY.

Senate majority leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said that with less than a week before Congress adjourns, the Senate would tackle pending bills on Monday and Tuesday first before resuming deliberations on the report.

Zubiri said he expects heated debates to resume Wednesday after which senators could shake hands to start their electoral campaign.

Congress adjourns sine die on February 5. Campaign period for the May 11 elections starts on February 9.

Senators exchanged harsh words Monday and Tuesday last week after Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile sponsored the 84-page report to the plenary.

Enrile alleged that Villar used his influence to realign the C-5 road extension project for the benefit of his and his family’s real estate business. The report further asked Villar to return to government some P6.22 billion which was supposedly spent on the realignment of the project.

Villar denied the accusations and said he is proud of the project which he claimed benefited residents of Las Piñas and Parañaque.

At least 16 signatures are needed to carry the report.

Zubiri asked his colleagues to refrain from using "unparliamentary remarks" because such could cast a negative light on the Senate.

Senators were criticized last week for their remarks deemed personal and inappropriate.

Sen. Loren Legarda, Villar’s running mate in the May polls, said she would "vote according to my conscience" if the senators present would put the issue to a vote. "I am prepared to vote according to my conscience, according to the evidence presented, according to what I think is right. The others should not use the party stand to judge other people," she said.

Legarda said there should be closure to the C-5 controversy and senators should make their stand very clear. "We should be fair to Sen. Villar. I cannot speak for him on this issue or what he wants to do. In December, he already spoke on the Senate floor on the C-5 issue and he does not want to go around explaining his side on the same issue over and over again. But I fear that his political rivals will try to raise the issue again and again," she said.

"He does not want to quarrel with other people and I share that thinking. I want to wage a positive campaign. Our focus today should not only be the campaign but rendering service to our people," she said.

Via: http://lorenlegarda.com.ph/news_108_Vote_on_Villar_set_on_Wednesday.php

Villar fears insults from peers, says Ocampo

MANILA, PHILIPPINES—SEN. MANUEL VILLAR JR. HAS REFUSED TO FACE HIS COLLEAGUES IN THE SENATE TO EXPLAIN HIS SIDE ON THE C-5 ROAD PROJECT CONTROVERSY FOR FEAR OF BEING DISRESPECTED ON THE FLOOR, ACCORDING TO BAYAN MUNA PARTY-LIST REP. SATUR OCAMPO.

“I advised him to show up during the hearings. However, Villar is not used to questioning, especially by his [political] rivals,” Ocampo, who is running as guest senatorial candidate of Villar’s Nacionalista Party (NP), said in Sta. Rita, Pampanga, on Sunday.

“Baka bastusin lang ako diyan. Ayokong mangyari ’yon (They might show me disrespect and I don’t want that to happen),” Ocampo quoted Villar as telling him when he brought up the idea with the senator.

He said Villar had resorted to submitting documents to the Senate to dismiss accusations of irregularities in the road extension project in the cities of Parañaque and Las Piñas.

A draft report by the Senate committee of the whole found Villar to have engaged in unethical conduct in connection with the C-5 project, which benefited his real estate companies. It seeks to censure Villar and demand the return of some P6 billion to the government.

“He submitted a thick documentation of the C-5 project to prove that there was no overpricing there,” Ocampo said. “I’m still convincing him to face and resolve the issue before the Senate adjourns for the campaign period.”

Voting on Wednesday
Senators are to vote on the committee report on Wednesday, the last session day of Congress before it goes on a three-month break.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who prepared Committee Report No. 780, wanted the vote to happen and had instructed him to set the date for the debate on the report and the voting, according to Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri.

“Senate President Enrile had also a blast text to majority members that this is a conscience vote and that he would not bind the members of the majority to vote either in favor or against. So it’s up to us,” Zubiri said on dzBB radio Sunday.

Villar’s running mate in the presidential election, Sen. Loren Legarda, said she would vote “according to her conscience” and the evidence.

“The others should not use the party stand to judge other people,” Legarda said in a statement.

Zubiri said he was proposing that the vote be held on Wednesday so that the Senate could be able to finish in the next two days all pending measures either for passage on third reading or ratification by the chamber.

He later said he may schedule on Tuesday night the Senate deliberations on the report. Debates could continue until Wednesday and would be concluded by holding a vote on the same day.

“I just spoke to Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and thankfully he agreed with me,” Zubiri said in a phone interview. Cayetano is a member of the minority bloc and a staunch ally of Villar.

Adverse affect
Ocampo said the controversy involving Villar could adversely affect the candidacies of other NP members and guest candidates like him.

While he was part of the NP ticket, he said he would not encourage Villar to run away from the controversies he was facing.

“Our political coalition Makabayan is independent. We are guest candidates [of NP] and we can issue comments on controversies involving Villar. This is our politics. We will not hesitate to tell the truth and stand by our beliefs,” Ocampo said.

He said he agreed to join the NP slate because he and Villar had the same platform on land reform.

Ocampo said the senator promised that he would implement programs to help farmers, workers and poor Filipinos should he win the presidential race.

Ceasefire extended
The scheduling of the vote for Wednesday effectively extended the “ceasefire” enforced by the senators since late last week when two groups of senators collided with each other over the committee report.

Sessions in the Senate had been tumultuous since two weeks ago when the chamber started to debate on the C-5 controversy, with some senators resorting to unparliamentary language in defending their positions.

Senators also were debating on Resolution No. 1472, which sought to clear Villar of any wrongdoing and dismiss the ethics case filed against him by Sen. Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal.

In the radio interview, Zubiri said senators would only vote on the committee report and not on the resolution because the latter contained the same topic, which is the C-5 controversy.

“Let’s just hold one vote so that the outcome of this debate would not be that acrimonious,” he said.

Unparliamentary
language Zubiri said he would take the initiative to request that unparliamentary language be stricken out of the record “so that this kind of insults won’t be on the records of the 14th Congress when the next generation looks them up.”

Before they could even start voting to approve or reject the report, they would have to decide on whether the penalty of censure or a strong reprimand would need the votes of two-thirds of the senators or just a simple majority, Zubiri said.

Enrile and majority members said the penalty of censure required the vote of a simple majority of the 23-member Senate or 12 votes, while Villar’s camp said it would require a two-thirds vote or 16 senators.

Zubiri shrugged off speculations that the majority bloc was pushing for the vote on Wednesday because it did not have the votes to censure Villar due to the absence of Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada and Sen. Panfilo Lacson.

Estrada had to go to the United States last week because of an emergency involving his wife but he told the Inquirer last Friday that he would be home by Monday.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. pushed for a caucus of all senators on Monday so that they could come up with the ground rules on the debate and the vote.

Via: http://lorenlegarda.com.ph/news_107_Villar_fears_insults_from_peers,_says_Ocampo.php

JPE calls for conscience vote on C-5 deal report

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - SENATE PRESIDENT JUAN PONCE ENRILE HAS CALLED FOR A “CONSCIENCE VOTE” BY SENATORS IN THE MAJORITY ON THE CONTROVERSIAL COMMITTEE REPORT 780 BEFORE THE THIRD REGULAR SESSION OF THE 14TH CONGRESS ADJOURNS THIS WEEK.

Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said he received instructions from Enrile over the weekend to schedule the voting for Committee Report 780.

The report recommends the censure of Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. and directs him to return P6.2 billion, which the government supposedly lost when roads were diverted to pass through his real estate properties in Las Piñas and Parañaque for the C-5 Road extension project. Villar has denied irregularities in the deal.

“First, (Enrile) instructed me to schedule the debates and final voting of the Committee Report by Wednesday. And second, he sent a blast text message to all majority members that this is a conscience vote and he will not bind the members of the majority to vote either in favor or against it. It’s up to us as to what we have seen in the evidence in the committee report,” Zubiri told dzBB radio yesterday.

Zubiri said that the Senate will also prioritize the passage of bills on second and third reading before it sets the debates on the committee report so as not to take so much time on arguments that border on personal insults as what happened last week after Enrile read out his report before the plenary.

The majority leader noted that the Committee Report is a very divisive issue, which is why he suggested that the Senate pass the pending local bills as well as those already in the bicameral level and second and third levels to avoid derailing the passage of important legislation.

Although minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. agrees with the need to prioritize legislative agendas, he reiterated the need for the senators to put the Committee Report under interpellation to scrutinize its details.

He said the Senate could again be divided if the majority immediately puts the issue to a vote.

But the minority leader admits that they cannot do anything because they are at the behest of the majority.

Pimentel also questioned why Sen. Jamby Madrigal, the complainant in the ethics case against Villar, was scheduled to be the first interpellator. The minority group finds this unfair, he said.

Aside from other contentious issues, the majority and the minority are also clashing over the number of votes needed to implement the recommendation of the Enrile-led Committee of the Whole, which tackled the ethics complaint against Villar.

Divergent legal opinions

Aside from other contentious issues, the majority and the minority are also clashing over the number of votes needed to implement the recommendation of the Enrile-led Committee of the Whole, which tackled the ethics complaint against Villar.

The majority believes that a simple majority of the 23 total senators or 12 votes are needed, according to Zubiri. But Pimentel and the other Villar allies, Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Miriam Defensor Santiago and Joker Arroyo, believe that the committee report should get two-thirds or 16 votes before it is implemented because the report deals with the disciplinary action against a fellow senator.

Both the majority and the minority senators saw a gray area in the Constitution, which only provided a provision of two-thirds vote needed before a senator is suspended or dismissed.

However, the Enrile report only recommended a censure or reprimand, which is not covered by the law.

A resolution initially signed by 12 senators is also pending for plenary debates, supposedly side by side with Committee Report 780.

Twelve senators, including Villar, signed the resolution, but two signatories, Jinggoy Estrada and Francis Pangilinan, decided to withdraw their signatures, tilting the balance to the majority.

“We have a fundamental question on how many votes are needed to censure. There is the group of Senators Pimentel and Santiago who said that 16 votes are needed. There is another group led by Enrile, and myself included, that believe 12 votes or a simple majority is needed. This is not suspension or removal from the office as senator. This is just a censure,” Zubiri said.

The majority leader, however, believes that the issue will have to be decided in the end through numbers.

Conscience vote

Sen. Loren Legarda, Villar’s running mate, vowed that she would “vote according to her conscience” once the senators present would put the issue to a vote.

In a clear indication that she would stand by her running mate, Legarda reiterated that the Senate as an institution should not be used as an instrument to judge a colleague.

“I am prepared to vote according to my conscience, according to the evidence presented, according to what I think is right. The others should not use the party stand to judge other people,” she said, adding that there should be a closure to the C-5 controversy and senators should make their stand very clear.

Legarda also echoed the statements of Zubiri and Pimentel that the Senate priority should be the passage of pending important bills, especially since there are only several days left in the current session.

She also warned against a possible failure of elections if the Comelec is unable to get its act together in preparation for the May political exercise.

Via: http://lorenlegarda.com.ph/news_106_JPE%20calls_for_conscience%20_vote_on_C-5_deal_report.php

Loren on C5 row: I’ll vote according to my conscience

WITH THE SENATE POISED TO MEET IN PLENARY THIS COMING WEEK TO DISCUSS THE REPORT OF THE C5 ROAD EXTENSION CONTROVERSY, SEN. LOREN LEGARDA SAID TODAY THAT SHE WOULD “VOTE ACCORDING TO MY CONSCIENCE” IF THE SENATORS PRESENT WOULD PUT THE ISSUE TO A VOTE.

In a clear indication that she would stand by her running mate, Nacionalista Party standard bearer, Sen. Manny Villar, Loren said: “I am prepared to vote according to my conscience, according to the evidence presented, according to what I think is right. The others should not use the party stand to judge other people.”

Loren said that there should be a closure to the C5 controversy and senators should make their stand very clear. “We should be fair to Sen. Villar. I cannot speak for him on this issue or what he wants to do. In December, he already spoke on the Senate floor on the C5 issue and he does not want to go around explaining his side on the same issue over and over again. But I fear that his political rivals will try to raise the issue again and again,” she said.

Loren said Villar has helped many people and the electorate should consider his experience in the private sector and in public office rather than what his detractors are saying. “He does not want to quarrel with other people and I share that thinking. I want to wage a positive campaign. Our focus today should not only be the campaign but rendering service to our people,” she said.

Loren said the Senate priority should be the passage of pending important bills, especially since there are only several days left in the current session.

Loren also warned against a possible failure of elections if the Comelec is unable to get its act together in the preparation for the May political exercise.

“The Comelec should make it very clear whether they are really prepared for full automation, or only partial automation. Because if we revert to manual voting, we have to prepare our watchers at the precinct level. I was one of those who felt cheated in 2004 and I am really concerned that the same thing could happen in May,” Loren said.

“We should give the Comelec a deadline, and the deadline is now.

It should be now, it’s already running late,” Loren added.

As to the proposal to hold early elections in certain areas, Loren said that this would all depend on the capability of the poll body to explain the mechanics of poll automation to the electorate. “Are the people prepared? Are the machines ready? Have they taught the people how to operate the machines? Before we can have early voting, these questions must be answered, Loren said.

Source: http://lorenlegarda.com.ph/news_098_Loren_on_C5_row.php