Quezon 1st district Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga (left) and House Speaker Martin Romualdez (Contributed photo, Speaker's office)



House Speaker and Leyte 1st district Rep. Martin Romualdez is taking the "high road" amid potentially disruptive "diversions". Thus, said Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC) stalwart, Quezon 1st district Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga in statement Sunday, June 11 that trumpeted the House of Representatives' a highly-productive first regular session wherein it passed a record number of bills and resolutions “Speaker Romualdez is taking the high road. He is even urging us to be more productive as the second regular session of Congress draws near. And I fully agree: we have to focus our eyes on the prize, which is working for the welfare of our constituents, the Filipino people,” Enverga, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture and Food, said. “And the House, under the guidance of Speaker Romualdez, has a strong synergy with President Marcos and his administration. I hope we could maintain that and continue to be effective in our objectives, such as passing priority legislation of the President,” he added. The House processed a total of of 9,600 measures composed of 8,490 bills, 1,109 resolutions, and one petition during the 10-month long first regular session. This means that the House was able to process an average of 30 measures for each session day. In all, 577 bills were passed on third and final reading, including 33 out of 42 bills listed as priority measures of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. and the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) Enverga said this outstanding performance by the House has been recognized in the surveys of large polling firms like Social Weather Stations (SWS), Pulse Asia, and Octa Research. “The House of Representatives and Speaker Romualdez have been getting high marks from surveys conducted recently. We don’t want any diversions to adversely affect the good performance of lawmakers. We need to look after the welfare of the people,” said the Quezon lawmaker. Romualdez is president of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD), the biggest political party in the House. In the Octa Research survey conducted from March 24 to 28, Romualdez recorded a 59 percent satisfaction rating--15 percentage points higher than the 44 percent he obtained in the October 2022 survey. He also recorded a 55 percent trust rating, which means the majority of Filipinos trust him. This is higher by 17 percentage points compared to the survey done in the last quarter of 2022. The same goes for the recent surveys of SWS and Pulse Asia, in which the House and Romualdez obtained 56 percent and 51 percent satisfaction and performance ratings, respectively. “We could not have done this without the synergy we have with Malacañang. The teamwork made all of these possible. This is why we have to further strengthen this harmonious relations with the administration of President Marcos,” Enverga said.