PEACE-MAKER
Jose de Venecia Jr.
Former Speaker of the House
In the House of Representatives, the battle for the speakership seems over but the formal voting during the opening of the 19th Congress in July.
Majority Floor Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, who is president of Lakas-CMD, has secured the unanimous support of his colleagues from Lakas as well as the endorsement from other political parties.
Romualdez has been a steady hand in the House, especially during a turbulent change in the speakership, from Alan Peter Cayetano to Lord Alan Velasco.
As majority leader, Romualdez successfully shepherded the passage of Duterte administration’s legislative agenda, especially concerning the Covid-19 response.
The Lakas-CMD has also remained strong and has continued to play a crucial role in nation-building under his stewardship as party president.
With the emergence of the multiparty system, our country’s political landscape has been altered. Since 1992, no single political party has dominated Congress with an outright majority. Thus, the need to build a coalition of political parties to pass the political, economic, and social legislation and advance national causes.
We first faced this challenge in 1992, when we had our first experience in multi-party democracy and following the election of then former Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos as president.
As we pointed out in our previous column, Ramos won only 24 percent of the national vote and therefore he was a minority president. We also said in the same column that President Ramos needed then a Lakas-led governing coalition in Congress to pass his legislative agenda.
In 1992, of the 200 seats in the House of Representatives, Lakas-NUCD-UMDP won only 37. The rest was divided among the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino with 87; Nationalist People’s Coalition, 47; Liberal Party, 15; Nacionalista Party, 5; Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, 3; and the rest, independents.
Surveying the political landscape, we put together what we called a “power-sharing and burden-sharing formula” that led to an unprecedented grand coalition of political parties in Congress.
We named it the “Rainbow Coalition.” In recent years, it has been called “Super Majority.”
The Rainbow Coalition passed 228 reform laws in legislative-executive partnership that produced a modest economic miracle for the Philippines in the early 1990s.
We learned much earlier, at a young age of 26, that the art of coalition-building is at the heart of governance. Coalitions are needed not just to win elections but to pass vital legislation. Coalitions make governments more effective.
At 26, we became chief political adviser to Liberal Party congressman Cornelio Villareal of Capiz, who was then aspiring to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
He was up against the Nacionalista Party congressman Daniel Romualdez of Leyte, the then incumbent House Speaker and a giant in Leyte politics.
It was an uphill battle as the Nacionalistas won 72 seats in the House while the Liberals had only 27.
Following a thorough review of the political factors, we persuaded some Nacionalista Party congressmen to join the Liberals without the Nacionalistas leaving their party. We called this coalition the “Allied Majority,” which catapulted Villareal to the speakership.
Cornelio Villareal, popularly known as Kune, served as representative of Capiz for some 60 years. His political career began when he was elected delegate to the 1935 Constitutional Convention. His last stint as congressman was in 1987, where, at 83, he was the oldest member of the 8th Congress. He was a valued ally of the late Speaker Eugenio Perez, last Speaker of the Commonwealth and the first Speaker of the Philippine Republic.
We had fond memories of the late Manong Kune, as we fondly called him, as his political adviser in 1961 and then as his colleague in the House of Representatives in 1969 and in 1987.
We were elected congressman of Pangasinan for the first time in 1969, at the age of 32.
Our first political campaign, however, was when we were 22, not as a candidate but as a campaign leader of Dr. Francisco Duque when he ran for governor of Pangasinan. He later served as Health Secretary in the President Diosdado Macapagal administration.
We are forever grateful to God and the Filipino people for the honor to serve our country and to help advance the causes of peace, development, dialogue, understanding, and cooperation in Asia and the international community.
Indeed, our Rainbow Coalition, which we initiated, enabled us during our time to be elected five times as Speaker of the House of Representatives.