Senator Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri on Monday, July 22 said the so-called “Solid Six” will stay independent and ask that they compose one-fourth of the membership of each committee in the Senate.

The former Senate president said his group will raise this in their upcoming meeting with the new Senate leadership headed by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero.

“We remain to be, of course, a working bloc in the Senate but also independent in the Senate. But we’re part of the majority, we’re not in the minority, nor are we going with the opposition.

So we can help and we're willing to criticize, where we need to improve the measures, we will improve it,” Zubiri said in an interview at the sidelines of the opening of the 19^th Congress’ Third Regular Session.

Zubiri said their group wants to remain intact, even if they are just only six members now with Sen. Sonny Angara taking the helm of the Department of Education (DepEd).

“Because what’s important is the membership because we’re six, so we’re one-fourth of the Senate,” he said.

“So we’re requesting hopefully that one-fourth of the committee memberships will be given to our blloc as well. That is so important. It’s possible that we would no longer be given membership,” he pointed out.

“Remember that we were ex-officio members before so I don’t have any membership in any committee,” he explained.

Aside from him, Senators Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito, Loren Legarda, Joel Villanueva have no committee memberships as of the moment.

“We’ll request that tomorrow in the caucus, that since we form one-fourth of the Senate, we’d also request that one-fourth of the members of each committee. So if there are 10 members in one committee, at least one fourth of that should come from us,” he said.

Zubiri clarified that they are not looking for any committee, but that they “just want to work for the benefit of the Senate.”

It was last May when Zubiri was replaced by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero as the Senate president.