President recalls House ouster event

WHEN President Duterte said last Thursday that his daughter Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte Carpio was behind the ouster of Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez as speaker of the House of Representatives, the President’s new spokesman Sal Panelo was quick to comment that the ouster was really the decision of the House.

Panelo may have wanted to protect the President from criticism that the Presi­dent was unduly controlling the House, an independent body of Congress under the Constitution. Thus, he stressed in an interview, that whatever role Mayor Sara may have played in the ouster, it was ultimately a decision of the House whose members, Panelo said, had long felt that the Alvarez leadership was not giving them their due as elected representatives.

There have been many times in the past when the President appeared to be ad­vocating questionable positions, only to clarify later what he truly meant and said. It reached a point where one presidential aide advised critics to take his words with “creative imagination.”

In the case of Speaker Alvarez’s ouster, the President told the 44th Philippine Busi­ness Conference and Expo at the Manila Hotel that his daughter did not take lightly Alvarez’s reported statement that he could impeach the President. Thus she started calling on congressmen who responded with a move that led to his replacement by former President, now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

We remember that television coverage of the President’s State of the Nation Ad­dress (SONA) on July 23 which was delayed for hours as congressmen maneuvered and elected a new speaker. It was a SONA many people remember as one without the usual informal remarks by the President.

President Duterte was right in saying his daughter led the ouster move; if she had not acted, there would have been no ouster. But spokesman Panelo was also right in saying it was ultimately a decision of the House; they apparently just needed a good reason to take the action they did.

We must now put all of these events behind us and look to the future. In the few months left before he present 17th Congress passes on into history, it will continue to enact needed legislation. It will then be replaced by the 18th Congress whose members will be elected on May 13, 2019. Hopefully, it will be spared the difficul­ties that led to the unexpected ouster of a speaker and the disruption of a long-scheduled SONA.