The word war between the House of Representatives and Senate on the soon-to-be enacted "Bayanihan to Recover as One" bill seems far from over, with some House leaders adding fuel to the fire Sunday.
Deputy Speaker and Laguna 1st district Rep. Dan Fernandez said in a DZBB radio interview that he suspects the senators are purposely making House members look bad following the conclusion of the Bicameral Conference Committee meetings on the P165-billion economic stimulus package last week.
"Para silang may (It's like they have a) calculated, sinister na maneuvering of the situation eh at the expense of the members of the House of Representatives," Fernandez said of the senators, although he did not mention anybody in particular.
"Parang ano ba to, presidential election na ba to? (What is this, is this the presidential election already?)" he said, calling back to an earlier statement wherein he accused the senators of attacking their House counterparts to acquire political mileage ahead of the 2022 presidential elections.
Fernandez was irked by the insinuations of some senators--particularly those who took part in the Bicam meetings--that the House contingent merely tried to advance personal interests during their discussion of the so-called "Bayanihan 2" bill.
"Nakakasama ng loob na makita mo na yung ating mga kasamahan doon sa Upper Chamber ay nagsasalita ng mga ganitong klaseng salita na sinasabing 'selfless' sila, di ba? Tapos sasabihin nila, 'pure advocacy tayo, wala tayong mga partikular na tinukoy..tayo dito ay panay mga magagandang adbokasiya lamang ang ating ginagawa (It hurts when your counterparts in the Upper Chamber say words like these and describe themselves as 'selfless,' you know what I mean? Then they'll claim that 'we pushed for pure advocacy, we didn't mention any particular interests...we only pursued the good advocacies),'" he said.
"So kung sila walang ganun, kami may ganun (So it means that since they didn't have personal interests, we do). This is an indirect attack on the members of the House of Representatives. We will not accept this kind of actuation," stressed Fernandez.
The root of their conflict was supposedly the House and Senate's differing stand on what to do with the P10-billion allocation for the ailing tourism industry. The congressmen's version of the bill pours the funds into job-generating infrastructure projects, while the senators' version calls for its conversion to soft loans intended for tourism industry players and stakeholders.
A compromise was reached wherein the two chambers still attained the spirit of their respective proposals in the finalized bill.
On Saturday, the Deputy Speaker said: "These senators appear conflicted. They want to make it appear that they did their part in passing Bayanihan 2, obviously to worm their way into the good graces of an overwhelming majority of our people who support President Duterte and are appreciative of his administration’s comprehensive COVID-19 response measures, but they are at the same time distancing themselves from the bill, obviously to please the ragtag band of anti-government critics."
Meanwhile, Kabayan Party-List Rep. Ron Salo called out on Sunday Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri for earlier claiming that he didn’t have any disparaging remarks about the Senate’s House counterparts in the Bicam panel.
"There was a howl of protest from Sen. Pia Cayetano who didn’t find funny the comments made by Zubiri and certain other senators about their peers in the House," Salo said. Senator Cayetano is the sister of House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano.
“So what in heaven’s name did Senator Cayetano gripe about if Sen. Zubiri’s rebuttal that he didn’t denigrate the House panelists in the Bicam committee—and had in fact even defended them—were true as he now claims?” asked the head of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal panel.
The lady senator had defended the House members from allegations of pursuing personal interests during the Bicam meetings, even telling her colleagues that "these people mean well, they want to also take care of our constituents the way we also wanted to."
Meanwhile, Anakalusugan Party-List Rep. Mike Defensor underscored that the House's version of the proposed Bayanihan 2 turned out to be the superior version, since around 40 major provisions of the final version were actually introduced by the House Bicam contingent and merely adopted by their Senate counterparts.
Defensor, chairman of the Committee on Public Accounts, also issued a challenge of sorts to the senators to determine which chamber truly had the better advocacy.
"My suggestion is to authorize the secretariat to release the minutes of the sessions of the Bicam talks so the public would know who presented the majority of the major provisions in the final Bayanihan 2 bill and who among the Bicam members had actually been lobbying actively for which interest groups during the entire discussions," he said.