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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 11) – The heated issue of leadership in the House of Representatives will be addressed once the house passes the proposed national budget for 2021, House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez said Sunday.
“Budget before politics … Politics as the Speaker issue will be addressed after the approval of the national budget to ensure a smooth transition,” Leyte’s Representative said in a statement.
Romualdez also cited the goal of approving the budget in the third and final reading before October 16, to ensure its timely approval.
Last year, President Rodrigo Duterte forged a shared term agreement between the current Speaker of the House, Alan Peter Cayetano, and the representative of Marinduque, Lord Allan Velasco, to resolve the dispute between his two allies. But rivals have spent the past few weeks meeting with the president about his so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” with both sides defending the coveted position.
Cayetano declared the interruption of the session before the October 17 schedule after approving the budget in second reading, a measure that frustrates the vote of the plenary to elect Velasco on the 14th.
Duterte has since asked Congress to hold a special session Oct. 13-16 to resume deliberations on the budget, which he also called urgent.
Meanwhile, the vice president of the House of Representatives, LRay Villafuerte, an ally of Cayetano, echoed Romualdez’s statement and said that the leadership talks should be “secondary” to the budget for now.
“If someone wants to invoke a change of leadership, the so-called agreement or whatever, that should be secondary to the budget,” Villafuerte said in an online conference. “Let’s get the budget approved first and talk about anything after the budget is approved.”
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